LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

Humankind is aggressive—physically and verbally—and both forms are dangerous. Verbal aggression in the shape of insults is widespread across languages, and I would venture to suggest that son of a bitch is one of the most widespread of them, at least in the Western world. I stand to be corrected. The expression has generated its euphemisms. In English, we find softened variants such as son of a bee , son of a biscuit , the jocular son of a gun , and the abbreviation SOB . One newspaper writes: “…but he is a damn son of a bee and yet I am very happy he was not killed” (News 24, November 24, 2017, U.S.). Y, claro, el castellano también recurre a atenuaciones del antiguo hijo de puta : hijo de pu , hijo de la Gran Bretaña , hijo de su madre … expresiones que suenan menos fuertes. The pattern itself— son of a + X , hijo de + X —is strikingly productive. Needless to say, I reject both such verbal aggression and violence in all its forms.

  GRINGOS, FALSE ETYMOLOGY, AND EPITHETS   Quoting from memory, in one of his Essays with a Purpose (1954) Salvador de Madariaga—Galician, Oxford professor—mocks popular etymologists who believe outrage comes from out + rage , rather than from French outrage (Spanish ultraje ). The example is apt, because the world is crowded with linguistic amateurs: backyard linguists, Sunday etymologists, improvised translators, makeshift grammarians—of every language and persuasion. I may well be one of them.      Take gringo . According to folk etymology, the word arose during the Mexican–American War, when Mexican soldiers supposedly misheard American troops singing “Green Grow the Lilacs.” Charming—and false. Another chestnut derives gringo from greenhorn . Also wrong. Gringo is Spanish. It is a variant of griego (“Greek”), long used to denote incomprehensible speech (“It’s Greek to me”). It entered the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española in 1869 with the def...