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I just got this E-mail from a friend (an artillery re-enacter) today. I'm amazed!!  Lacking computer savvy, however, I couldn't get in to the citations provided: Bet you didn't know... In the heyday of the sailing ship, every ship had to have cannon for protection. Cannon of the times required round iron cannon balls. The master wanted to store the cannon balls such that they could be of instant use when needed, yet not roll around the gun deck. The solution was to stack them in a square based pyramid next to the cannon. The top level of the stack had one ball, the next level down had four, the next had nine, the next had 16, and so on. Four levels would provide a stack of 30 cannon balls. The only real problem was how to keep the bottom level from sliding out from under the weight of the higher levels. To do this, they devised a small plate ("monkey") with one rounded indentation for each cannon ball in the bottom layer. When iron was used to make this plate ("monkey"), the cannon balls would rust to the plate. As a result, these plates were made of brass to prevent this problem-- thus the name "brass monkey." When temperature falls, brass contracts in size faster than iron. As it got cold on the gun decks, the indentations in he brass monkey would get smaller than the iron cannon balls they were holding. If the temperature got cold enough, the bottom layer would pop out of the indentations spilling the entire pyramid over the deck. Thus it was, quite literally, "COLD ENOUGH TO FREEZE THE BALLS OFF A BRASS MONKEY." And all this time some of you thought we were talking dirty. <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <HEAD> <META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type> <META content='"MSHTML
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yup, this is pretty much what Capital Kiwi told us some time back. There was some lack of agreement, but I've forgotten the details.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Eear WO'N I agree with Quinion, that no shipmaster in his right mind would stack cannon balls, which would be more dangerous than the proverbial "loose cannon".Incidentally, look at date on Quinion's credit line below: 1998!
BRASS MONKEY WEATHER
From Peter Grace: "Over here in Queensland, it gets pretty cool in the
evenings at this time of the year (though it's probably pretty mild by UK
standards). The other day, I used the expression brass monkey weather
and was asked to explain. Any ideas?"
The full expansion of the phrase is "cold enough to freeze the balls off a
brass monkey" and is extremely common throughout the English-speaking
world, often reduced to the form you give, no doubt in polite company.
The origin is unknown. All I can report is that variants of it were first
recorded in the USA in the early part of this century. There is some
suspicion, because of a citation from 1835, that the phrase may in fact be
at least of this age.
There is a story, often repeated, that the phrase originated in naval warfare
at the time of the Napoleonic wars, if not before. It is said that the stack of
cannon balls alongside each gun, arranged in a pyramid on a brass plate to
save space, was called a monkey. In very cold weather, it is related, the
cannon balls would shrink and balls would fall off the stack.
Though monkey was a term used in this context and era (the boys bringing
charges to the guns from the magazine were known as powder monkeys
and there is some evidence that a type of cannon was called a monkey in
the mid seventeenth century), there is no evidence for the word being
applied to a pile of cannon shot.
The explanation sounds like a story that's been woven around a term
already well known and is full of logical holes: would they pile shot into a
pyramid? (hugely unsafe on a rolling and pitching deck); why a brass plate?
(far too expensive, and unnecessary: they actually used wooden frames
with holes in, called garlands, fixed to the sides of the ship); was the plate
and pile together actually called a monkey? (no evidence, as I say); would
cold weather really cause such shrinkage as to cause balls to fall off?
(highly improbable, as all the balls would reduce in size equally and the
differential movement between the brass plate and the iron balls would be
only a fraction of a millimetre).
Fun story, though.
World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996-. All rights reserved.
Page created 15 August 1998.
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old hand
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old hand
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Gee, I'm confused now - I'd heard a different etymology.....
I understand that attributing this phrase to old English seafarers is on the right track, but a simple twisting of the language has resulted in some deep and long held misinterpretations.
Rather than being a nautical term, the phrase originated in seminaries - and thus the common misconception that it came from seamen. (One must also be very careful not to introduce semen into the discussion either, though this word no doubt fertilised centuries of misunderstanding.)
Anyway, back on the job.......
Apparently with the Church's omnipotent role in society those days, long before banks, it became the task of the friars in the local monastery to provide a safe repository for valuable documents. The demand for this service was highest in the winter months because the houses and buildings back then were damp and draughty. Important documents (nearly always on linen or vellum) were prone to ruination by attack from water, fungus or mould.
Rather than store these items with the day to day items of church paraphenalia and monastic regalia, they were kept in a special room, the key of which was held by the Abbott. The lock on the door to the strongroom was, by necessity, a complicated device requiring a special key - replete with a series of levers and cams. The key was made of an alloy of copper and tin, offering considerable superiority to iron by virtue of its resistance to rusting.
Unfortunately however, right when the demand for the church's repository service was at its highest (ie during the cold winter months), the special key often failed to work correctly. In the worst weather, the complicated add ons were even known to cease functioning altogether.
Hence the phrase, "Cold enough to freeze the pawls of a brass monk's key".
P-)
stales
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Oh my gawd, stales! You're a pip!
"The louder they groan the better they like 'em"
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Here, wow: you dropped your "m".
[handing-over-letter icon]
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Carpal Tunnel
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For another refutation of this charming story, try the Snopes page on myths and urban legends:
http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.htm (this is not markup - cut and paste into your browser)
"Claim: "Brass monkeys" were small brass plates used to hold cannonballs on the decks of sailing ships.
Status: False. "
and goes on from there.
(complete with references!)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Here, wow: you dropped your "m".Sparteye! You bad girl! [snicker] Stales is gonna come over here and slap you silly. [snort] 
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
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"Cold enough to freeze the pawls of a brass monk's key".Thanks for that, stales! My version pawls in comparison! urban mythThanks, wofahulicodoc! The rebuttals are thorough and make a lot of sense. So does anyone have an inkling of the phrase's true entymological origins?...Uncle Tsuwm? help! Or, based on the brass monkey lineage of phraseology offered in this response, perhaps someone coined it who really was just talkin' dirty, after all!
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Carpal Tunnel
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well I'll be a monkey's uncle! the phrase is treated by the OED. (why should I be surprised?) it seems that the phrase probably evolved from the simple concept that monkeys don't like cold weather much. and the first thing to freeze off the ol' brass monkey was the tail!
b. Slang phr. cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey: extremely cold. Also in similar and allusive phrases.
[1835 F. Chamier Unfortunate Man I. iv. 117 He was told to be silent, in a tone of voice which set me shaking like a monkey in frosty weather.] 1928 Amer. Speech IV. 123 Cold enough to freeze the tail off a brass monkey. 1937 Partridge Dict. Slang 528/2 Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. 1972 Evening Telegram (St. John's, Newfoundland) 5 Aug. 3/1 Here's Smallwood still putting up a brass-monkey face right to the bitter end. 1973 Guardian 20 July 9 (headline) Brass monkey weather. Ibid., You ought to buy yourself a brass monkey and then you will know what a freeze is.
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