[Sca-cooks] OT OOP balls and brass monkeys

[Decker, Terry D.]

Down!  You're getting awfully frisky over a fat fingered mistake.

Just because you're such a nice guy, I'll afflict you with another batch of
definitions.

Bear

http://www.greenapple.com/~words1/back-r.html

Origin of the Specious.

Dear Evan: Can you please tell me where the expression "Brass Monkeys" (used
when it's really cold) comes from. -- Karen, via the Internet.

Considering that monkeys are our evolutionary cousins, more or less, the
development of English slang has been of two minds regarding our little
primate pals. The monkey crops up in countless folk sayings and catch
phrases, some of which are vaguely affectionate -- to call a child a
"monkey," for instance. More often, however, the monkey has been used as an
object of mockery, from "making a monkey of" someone, meaning to cause them
to look foolish, to "I'll be a monkey's uncle," an expression of
astonishment. When we don a "monkey suit," or tuxedo, we're comparing our
appearance to that of the organ grinder's monkey, dressed in a gaily colored
outfit, that was a fixture of urban life in the 19th century. And while
"monkey business" may connote either innocent silliness or underhanded
behavior, to have a "monkey on one's back" is to be plagued by a stubborn
addiction, usually to illegal drugs. Monkeys could use a good
public-relations agent.

The slang term "brass monkeys" is actually a shortening of the phrase "cold
enough to freeze the tail off a brass monkey." (Common variants of the
phrase almost invariably specify a more risque element of the monkey's
anatomy, but we'll go with "tail" for purposes of this column.) While a
brass monkey might seem an outlandish item, such knickknacks were, in fact,
quite popular in Victorian drawing rooms, usually found in sets of three,
set in the classic kitsch "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" pose.
Given that brass monkeys were the Lava Lamps of the age and thus never far
from the Victorian mind, their use in the phrase is not surprising. Of
course, given the shocking dearth of brass monkeys in modern living rooms,
it's also not surprising that the phrase seems so mysterious to us today.


> 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