In article ,
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh wrote:

"Gareth Owen" wrote in message
...
"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" writes:

Nope, it has a quite definite etymology, but a rather exotic one.

The story I've heard is that it refers (in some way I could never
figure) to cannonballs and powder monkeys on Naval ships.

From the rather small niche of black powder historians, the story comes this
way:

Anyone who physically handled cannon balls or powder was known as a "ball
monkey" or "powder monkey". The term "powder monkey" is still used today.
"Ball monkey" seems to have been lost.

On board most armed ships of the British fleet were triangular brass racks -
low bars of brass forged into an equilateral triangle - mounted to the
decks, into which to stack cannon balls in the familiar pyramid fashion.
This, to ready the balls for quick access.

Although the "brass monkeys" were only an inch or two high, the stacks made
within them were quite stable -- until the temperature dropped very, very
cold. At that point, due to different coefficients of expansion between
brass and iron, the balls came tumbling off their racks.

Thus, "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey". Of course, the
vulgar connotations came quite soon after. G


Unfortunately, the above is *NOT* factual. It makes a good story, but ---
1) there are no authoritative references to those triangular frames as
a monkey (or variant of the word). I ran this down with several
professional military historians.
2) work out the thermal 'coefficient of expansion/contraction' for
the materials involved -- the fit 'at room temperature' would have
to be incredibly tight for the differences over, say 100 degrees F,
to cause the pyramid to tumble.

The "most reliable" history of the phrase traces it to cheap brass castings
from India, of "seated" monkeys (be it the classical "three monkeys" poses,
or others) imported to England and other Northern climes, with the subsequent
weather extremes leading to stress fractures at the relevant point in the
anatomy.


NOTE: I believed the 'naval' version to be the accurate story for many years.
had to do a bunch of digging to attempt to verify, when a career military
(artillery) person questioned it. Come to find there _wasn't_ any factual
basis. Despite the very plausible sound of it.

A few years later, "Cecil Adams" (of 'The Straight Dope') published his
research on the matter -- with the results cited above, with a note along
the lines of:
'improbable as it seems, this phrase is a literal description ...'