The brass monkey story |
| Many colorful expressions in the English language come from the days when wars were fought with sailing ships. "Freezing the balls off a brass monkey" is one of them. |
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A fighting ship had rows of cannons on each side. To stop the iron cannon balls rolling about on the deck they were piled up in a pyramid structure on a brass plate with dents in it, called a monkey. In very cold conditions the different thermal expansion rates for brass and iron dislodged the balls - literally - "Froze the balls off the brass monkey." There are pictures of cannon on the web, but none of a brass monkey. They probably melted them down in the nineteenth century? |
