Green’s Dictionary of Slang

term of endearment among sailors phr.

a euph. for bugger n.¹ (1)

1868		Ovens and Murray Advertiser (Beechworth, Vic.) 8 Oct. 3/1: [T]he cook had received notice because he had been very insulting [...] and had used a word which Dr Johnson defined as being occasionally employed as a term of endearment.
1868		Guardian 30 Dec. 3/6: Every one we passed hissed out a ‘Yang-ko’ (foreign dog) and various other epithets still less complimentary — that characterized by Dr Johnson as ‘a term of endearment among sailors’ predominating.
1887		Sportsman 27 July 4/1: [T]he youthful mariners may return from sea all too prone to fling about the word which the great lexicographer defined as term of endearment among sailors.
[1894		Freeman’s Jrnl (Sydney) 1 Dec. 14/4: [T]he language said to have been worked off during the trouble was about the sultriest ever heard even in the Alligator-land, but the defending counsel coolly informed the Bench that most of the lurid words used were merely ‘bush terms of endearment’].
1898		Dly News (London) 6 Apr. 3/5: ‘I simply said, “You — ”’ [...] ‘Don’t you call that bad language?’ Mr Justice Mills — ‘Dr Johnson says it is a term of endearment among sailors’ (Renewed laughter).
1906		J.O.P. Bland Houseboat Days in China n.p.: 🌐 In the ancient vernacular his name means ‘old and great’ – no doubt, like another word with us, it was originally ‘a term of endearment among sailors,’ an archaic equivalent of old cock, and its actual meaning is helmsman or shipmaster.
1911		Charlotte Obs. (NC) 20 Feb. 4/4: Dr Samuel Johnson refers to a short, ugly word [...] as ‘a term of endearment among sailors".
1928		Chicago Trib. 18 Apr. 18/4: [He] applied to the bandmaster of the British warship Royal Oak an epithet which Dr Johnson defined as ‘a term of endearment among sailors’.
1936		Gloucester Citizen 8 Jan. 9/4: ‘[A] girl punched the boy in the bark, and the boy turned and used an unparliamentary word, which has become a term of endearment among sailors’.