s.o.b.

   ‘Hey, Oliver, you s.o.b.!’ says a character in Oliver’s Story, by Erich Segal. The letters are usually pronounced individually in this euphemistic form of ‘son-of-a-bitch’.

   The full form of the vocative is occasionally used in Britain; the initial form of it remains American. According to Segal it can be used in the plural. Later in the novel occurs: ‘Goddamn hell, you s.o.b.s.’

   The speaker equates this with ‘you lousy bastards’. In A World of Difference, by Stanley Price, an American man says to an Englishman: ‘You’ve made a conquest, you lucky s.o.b.’