Nelson & His World

Well although there was snow on the ground this morning, I don’t know that it was cold enough to freeze the tail, ears, hair or anything else off a brass monkey, but I came across the following:


Does anyone believe any of this? Is a brass monkey a ship’s binnacle? Did Nelson have anything to do with quadrantal spheres?

I doubt very much whether the expression even has a nautical origin at all. A brass monkey seems to have been used as a common expression for someone or something unfeeling, whether emotionally or physically. 19th C uses include:
… They'd have stirred a brass monkey to passion …
… hearts, hands, feet and flesh are as cold and senseless as the toes of a brass monkey in winter …
… hot enough to melt the nose off a brass monkey …
… cold enough to freeze the tail off a brass monkey …
… sufficient, as the saying is, to scorch the brains of a brass monkey …
… T’would fetch a fair grin from a blessed brass monkey …
… It is hot enough to scald the throat out of a brass monkey …
… would talk the ears off a brass monkey …
… it would kindle the indignation of a brass monkey …
… a face as hard as a brass monkey …
… cold enough to freeze the ears off a brass monkey …

Even allowing for euphemisms there doesn’t seem to be much evidence for cannon balls or quadrantal spheres.

'Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable' is a reference book I use often to follow up my interest in language, word derivations etc.

Brewer has the following under 'brass monkey':

'In expressions such as 'cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey', the reference is to a type of brass rack or 'monkey' on which cannon balls were stored and which contracted in cold weather, so ejecting the balls.'

Does anyone find this persuasive?

I am not convinced that it is a nautical expression at all. For this to be true, then where are the contemporary quotes or references proving it?

Checking sources such as Falconer and Smith, I can find no trace of any rack or structure referred to as a 'monkey', made of brass or anything else.

Checking the OED, the term 'monkey' seems to have been used as a general term for something small - ie there are specific nautical references (mostly from the mid to late 19th century) to monkey islands, monkey gaffs, monkey blocks, monkey rails, monkey pumps etc.. usually meaning a small or temporary version. The OED has the expression, but puts it with 'common terms or phrases' when the word is used as a noun, with no origin.

There is not one reference to the 'monkey' being a receptacle for ordnance.....

If someone can actually produce a contemporary reference to a brass rack being used as a holder for cannon balls...and that it was called a monkey ... then I will accept the term, but if not, then I will continue to doubt it

What a lot of gobbledegook, Tony's original quote that is!

I have only heard of this, erroneously, as being connected with cannon balls and their storage on this so-called monkey - perhaps a bit like the frame around snooker balls when they are set up on the table. I think the theory was that the cannonballs and the frame, being of different metals, wouldn't freeze together. However cannonballs were actually kept in racks, which were lengths of timber near the centreline of the deck with half-rounds formed in them to accept the balls. Quite what Nelson has to do with it I don't know, but he is a well known name, so of course he has to be connected! There is also the monkey-jacket, a short coat worn aloft where it wouldn't encumber the wearer.

A quick reference also draws a blank in both Falconer's Marine Dictionary (1780) and the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea.

The explanation to 'boxing the compass' is also out. The term actually refers to a memory test, for Mids and others, in order for them to remember, in sequence, the 32 points of the magnetic compass, both clockwise and anti-clockwise. The master, or whoever else was carrying out the test, would start the hapless pupil at any point of the compass.

Well, the authorities at Oxford share your scepticism!

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/ ... ys?view=uk



The wonderful Michael Quinion dismisses the cannonball stacking theory as 'rubbish' and argues that it probably derives from statues of the thee wise monkeys...

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bra1.htm

However, there is an argument here:
http://tinyurl.com/yueqs3
which has little truck with the three wise monkey theory, and concludes that the origin of the phrase could relate to a naval cannon:

Belladonna,

Thanks for that.

On slightly another tack, this blind belief in the three 'wise' monkeys is surely misplaced, and I have always wondered why the Japanese call them so to the point of setting up a shrine to them!

I would certainly not put forward 'seeing no evil' and 'hearing no evil' as worthy qualities. Only by experiencing both of them, and it is practically impossible not to, can one hope to counter them by doing good. If one is not to both see and hear any evil, one might as well 'bury one's head in the sand', or is that the intention! 'Speaking no evil' is the wise part. Perhaps the trio should be renamed, 'the two stupid monkeys and the one wise one'.