Other forms: sons
A son is a boy or man seen as his parents' child. He might be six weeks old or sixty — a father at the school gate, a grown man ringing his mother on Sunday, three sons in a photograph on the mantelpiece.
Age has nothing to do with it: son names a relationship, not a size, which is why my son can be a baby or a bank manager. The pairs to know are son and daughter, and son-in-law for your daughter's husband. Older men use it to address younger ones — take a seat, son — friendly from a coach, patronising from a stranger. Surnames are full of it: Johnson, Jackson, Robinson, each one built from 'son of'. And like father, like son is what people say when a boy repeats his father's habits, good or bad.
1nounsonA person's male child, at any age.~96%
“Their son is at university in Leeds.”
2nounfriendlyA friendly or superior way for an older man to address a younger one.~2%
“Sit down, son, and tell me what happened.”
3nounthoughtA man thought of as belonging to a place or a people.~2%
“He is remembered as the town's most famous son.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
son is a family member.
Son is about as old as English words get: Old English sunu, from Proto-Germanic *sunuz, from Proto-Indo-European *suHnús. Behind all of those sits the root *sewH-, 'to bear, to give birth'. So son first meant no more than the one who was born. Thousands of years later it has lost a syllable and kept its shape.
Middle English
sone
English, today
son
From Middle English sone. From Middle English sonn, sone, sun, sune, from Old English sunu (“son”), from Proto-West Germanic sunu, from Proto-Germanic sunuz (“son”), from Proto-Indo-European suHnús (“son”), from Proto-Indo-European sewH- (“to bear; give birth”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA