to kiss the gunner's daughter
- idiom
- NSFW
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- If a sailor broke the rules, he might be forced to kiss the gunner's daughter as punishment.
Examples
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The captain ordered the misbehaving midshipman to kiss the gunner's daughter before the assembled crew.
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He was ordered to kiss the gunner's daughter as punishment.
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Many recruits dreaded the day they would have to kiss the gunner's daughter for the first time.
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When sailors misbehaved, they often had to kiss the gunner's daughter.
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In the 18th century, sailors often feared the phrase 'You will kiss the gunner's daughter' when they broke the rules.
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The captain warned his crew that any insubordination would result in them having to kiss the gunner's daughter as punishment.
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After the mutiny, the sailors knew they would face severe consequences and might have to kiss the gunner's daughter.
Synonyms
119
3.6
To hit a child's bottom with an open hand to punish them
18
8.3
Hit someone with a whip or stick as punishment
4
7.4
To hit someone with a flat board as punishment
2
9.9
To hit yourself or another person with a whip as punishment, often for religious reasons
To beat the soles of someone's feet as a form of punishment
Antonyms
How Severe
Surface Forms
Morphology
kiss + the + gunner's + daughter
The idiomatic meaning 'to undergo corporal punishment by being bent over a cannon and flogged' has no transparent connection to the literal words 'kiss', 'gunner's' and 'daughter' — a B1 learner would expect an affectionate or familial action, not punishment. This is a historical, culture-specific nautical idiom with no predictable compositional logic and therefore would be unintelligible without prior exposure.
Etymology
The phrase kiss the gunner's daughter comes from old navy punishments: sailors were bent over a cannon called the gunner's daughter and made to kiss its side while they were whipped. So the phrase came to mean 'to be punished'.