Etymology

If you were born in North America, this spelling probably doesn’t puzzle you. Since I was born in Japan and English is not my mother tongue, however, my first impression was “What king of gun is it?”

Now, I know where it came from. Many words derived from the Bible. So did sunovagun originally. It came from Mark 15:39 as shown below:

Mark 15:39 (King James Version)

And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God.

As you see in the above version, the centurion considered Jesus to be the son of God.

However, here is a problem. In Greek, the last sentence reads:

hO ANQRWPOS hUOIS QEOU HN.

No definite article precedes hUIOS (son). So the same sentence could be translated into:

• Truly this man was son of God
• Truly this man was a son of God
• Truly this man was the son of God

So, which one is right?

According to a certain linguist, you can solve this problem with Greek grammar called Apollonius’ Canon. It states that, when a head noun and one associated to it appear in the genitive, both can have or lack the article.

Maybe, the answer is anybody’s guess. However, the translator of the above version added the definite article before son according to the context of Chapter Nineteen of Mark.

hUOIS is anarthrous because it is the predicate (“the man” is articular subject). QEOU (god) is then written without the article for symmetry.

Therefore, this phrase could be understood any of the following ways:

• son of god
• son of a god
• son of the god
• a son of god
• a son of a god
• a son of the god
• the son of god
• the son of a god
• the son of the god

Choosing a proper article sometimes confuses me because my mother tongue (Japanese) doesn’t worry about it at all. Japanese does not even distinguish between a singular form and plural.

Although Mark was written between A.D. 60 and 70, “sunovagun” apparently showed up recently in print—probably sometime in the previous century. If you know exactly when it appeared and who printed it, let me know.

Noun

1. a contemptible person, asshole
2. used interjectionally to express emphasis, surprise, contempt, etc.

Synonyms

• son of a god
• sunovabitch
• sonovawitch
• asshole
• Gee
• Jesus
• Jee
• Jeez
• My!
• My Goodness!
• Goodness!
• Thank goodness!
• heavens
• For heaven’s sake!
• Thank heavens!
• Good heavens!

Usage

Med students cheat death, only to find that death is a sneaky sunovagun.

  — one-line summary of the movie “Flatliners”

Sunovagun! He did it.

I’m just tellin’ ya. That chap is a two-faced lying son of a ho. Don’t trust that sunovagun.

If you don’t know about ho, please click the above link. A new window will open up.