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.
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Page created 15 August 1998.
