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ksdkjlf t1_j6jwdob wrote

First usage in American literature, but the phrase is much older. Billy Shakes used a florid variant in King Lear in 1608: "One that..art nothing but the composition of a knaue, begger, coward, pander, and the sonne and heire of a mungrell bitch."

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WilliamofYellow t1_j6koa96 wrote

The OED also offers this quotation from a legal document of 1655:

>Damaris Dry..to answere Richard Carter Headborough..yt she did..reuile him..Calling him ye sonn of a Bitch, asking him also where ye Bawd his mother was.

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Greene_Mr t1_j6kwedy wrote

Holy shit, she called his mother a "Bawd"? :-O

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WilliamofYellow t1_j6kx2ia wrote

And he was a headborough, the 17th century equivalent of a cop. I imagine things didn't end well for Damaris Dry.

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