[Sca-cooks] OT OOP balls and brass monkeys

Chris Stanifer jugglethis at yahoo.com
Tue May 15 12:39:44 PDT 2001


--- "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
wrote:
>>>	The saying "it's so cold out there it could
> freeze the
> > balls off a
> > > 	brass monkey" came from when they had old
> cannons like ones
> > > 	used in the Civil War.

The etymology of this word is lost to the mists of
time, and there is really no way we are going to know
what is truly meant by the saying, other than it's
friggin' cold.  To say that any definition is
'accurate' is nothing more than guesswork.

But, just to keep the confusion thick, here's another
one:  The 'powder monkeys' who used to haul gunpowder
from magazine to cannons were replaced by brass boxes
called 'brass monkeys'.  Sailors would stack
cannonballs around these 'brass monkeys', and when the
brass got cold enough..... ah, you get the idea.

Balthazar of Blackmoor

=====
Words are Trains for moving past what really has no name...

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