kiss the gunner's daughter

present singular third person kisses the gunner's daughter · participle present kissing the gunner's daughter · participle past kissed the gunner's daughter · past kissed the gunner's daughter

1. archaicidiomaticgovernmentTo be flogged or beaten while restrained over a cannon.

   But I was punished, my lad—made to kiss the wench that never speaks but when she scolds, and that's the gunner's daughter, comrade.

   1824, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 14, in Redgauntlet

   1 more example

   "No," replied Bosun Thorpe, "for any breaches of discipline by boy seamen are dealt within by making him, in naval jargon, ‘kiss the gunner's daughter’. . . . he bends over one of the guns; then he is lashed across the backside."

   2002, Wallace Bruce, John Paul Jones: Father of the United States Navy, →ISBN, page 81

   Synonyms: marry the gunner's daughter