gunner's daughter
- noun
- /ˈɡʌnərz ˈdɔːtər/
- Archaic
:
hija de artillero
- She was known as the gunner's daughter, tough and fearless.
Examples
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Life as the gunner's daughter meant she learned to shoot early.
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Every summer, the gunner's daughter would visit her father at the base.
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She is a true gunner's daughter!
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Many gunner's daughters grow up learning to handle firearms.
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Growing up as a gunner's daughter, she embraced the challenges that came with military life.
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The gunner's daughter quickly became adept at using various firearms during her childhood.
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Known for her resilience, the gunner's daughter faced every obstacle with bravery.
Surface Forms
Morphology
gunner's + daughter
On the surface this reads as a simple possessive construction ('the daughter of a gunner'), but the attested idiomatic senses (historical punishment reference or idiomatic sense of a tough/soldier's child) are not predictable from the literal parts. The possessive 'gunner's' is culturally and historically specific and therefore a B1 learner who knows the individual words would not reliably infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
The noun gunner's daughter may come from life at military bases where a gunner worked with loud, powerful guns and his daughter grew up near the noise and strict rules. So, the phrase came to mean 'a tough woman' or 'a child of a soldier'.
