I THINK IT COMES FROM A GREEK PHRASE OF THE GODS IN MYTHOLAGY

bouncing baby Rich Rodek wrote: I just learned that a friend recently had a bouncing baby boy, but it is my experience that babies really don't bounce well. Where did this phrase come from? How about a "bouncing swaggering puppy" (Goldsmith) or a "bouncing but well-disposed young woman (Waugh)? In these examples, as in most cases, the adjective bouncing is used in the meaning 'vigorous' that harks back to the earliest meaning of the verb bounce. The origins of bounce aren't entirely clear, but its primary meaning was 'to hit something or someone so hard as to rebound'. As early as 1387 the expression "beat and bounce" was known; it was still being used in the 16th century, as in this example from Spencer's Faerie Queene: "And wilfully him throwing on the gras/Did beat and bounse his head and brest full sore." The expression was also used to describe knocking on doors, and bounse/bounce occurred alone (without beat) as well. It seems that bounce was preferred to beat or knock when the connotation of bounding movement was desired. The sixteenth century saw two other meanings emerge, that of 'bragging or blustering' and of 'bounding or throwing yourself around like a ball'. People who bounced in the sense of 'bragging' did so with enough gusto to frighten or bully other people; the verb is also used in the sense of 'giving someone a good scolding'. As far as the sense of 'vigorous movement' goes, there's usually a connotation of heavy things being banged about or of people jumping with loud thumps; bouncing wasn't something that a light object or person did. Porpoises and fish bounce in the water; a cannon ball bounces down a set of stairs. If you think about it, bouncing a baby on your knee can start to hurt after a while too. All these meanings are pretty much concurrent in development, and you can also find uses of the 'bounding movement' meaning extending to more lightweight things, including the expected bouncing balls, from this time period. However, the meaning that we know as the most common one today didn't really become prominent until the 19th century. So your bouncing baby boy is a vigorous child who's likely to bound around and make a lot of noise. The implication is that the child is healthy, as opposed to a weak baby who doesn't move much. The expression has probably lasted because it alliterates so nicely; Thomas Fuller used it in his 1662 The History of the Worthies of England: "...Elmeby...where this bouncing babe Bonner was born." Wendalyn http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20000717