brass monkey question?

Question

Does anyone know where the saying about freezing ,ect, ect ,off a brass monkey originate? It does not have a vulgar origon!

Answer 1

In the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters carried iron cannons. Those cannon fired round iron cannon balls. It was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon. But how to prevent them from rolling about the deck?
The best storage method devised was a square based pyramid with one ball on top, resting on four resting on nine which rested on sixteen.
Thus, a supply of thirty cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon.
There was only one problem -- how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding/rolling from under the others. The solution was a metal plate called a "Monkey" with sixteen round indentations. But, if this plate was made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it.
The solution to the rusting problem was to make "Brass Monkeys."
Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much aster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannon balls would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite literally,
"Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!"
(And all this time, you thought that was a dirty expression, didn't you?)

Answer 2

The following has been called untrue, but beyond saying "it's untrue", I haven't heard any evidence. On the other hand, I have seen the described object.

A brass "monkey" was a device for holding round iron cannonballs in the days of wooden sailing ships and Captain Bligh and Horatio Hornblower et al. In most temperatures, from cold to hot, it worked very well.

In extreme cold, the difference in metals meant that as they contracted with the cold, the brass would contract faster and the iron connonballs would fall off the "monkey".

For what it's worth.

Answer 3

A nautical origin involving cannon balls is often falsely ascribed to this phrase, but cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey is both literal and anatomical in origin. Although now the phrase is used almost exclusively in the canonical version given here, in early usage the parts of the monkey’s anatomy varied, as did the temperature, with the phrase being used to refer to hot weather as well.

The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd. edition’s entry on monkey includes the following citation from Frederick Chamier’s 1835 Unfortunate Man. While not in the form we’re familiar with today, it establishes monkeys as metaphorical instruments of weather measurement:

He was told to be silent, in a tone of voice which set me shaking like a monkey in frosty weather.

The earliest known use that parallels the modern form is from Herman Melville’s 1847 novel Omoo:

It was ‘ot enough to melt the nose h’off a brass monkey.

1857 sees the temperature reversed in C.A. Abbey’s Before The Mast:

It would freeze the tail off of a brass monkey.

These are followed by a string of variations from the American Civil War era and later. In Cooke’s Wearing Gray (1865):

His measure of cold was, "Cold enough to freeze the brass ears on a tin monkey."

Other anatomical parts frozen or melted off the hapless brass monkeys have been ears, hair, and whiskers. The poor creatures have also had their throats scalded out, pants scared off, and guts rotted out. One account has the monkey’s leg talked off and one writer was hungry enough to eat the brass monkey’s balls; one hopes he was speaking metaphorically.

The balls version is first recorded in 1937 in Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Although it is likely that many of the earlier citations were bowdlerized and originally referred to testicles as well.

The oft-cited nautical origin would have the monkey be a brass rack used to store cannonballs on board ship. According to the tale, in cold weather the rack would shrink, spilling the balls onto the deck. As we have seen, the lexical evidence doesn’t support this. While some of the earliest citations (Melville, Abbey) are in nautical contexts, they also refer to heat and other body parts. Furthermore, no one has ever produced a usage of monkey to mean a rack holding cannonballs (or anything similar). (Although there are some 17th century uses of monkey to mean a type of cannon and monkey tail is a 19th century name for a handspike used to aim and level a cannon.)

And the story ignores some basic facts of physics and naval life. First, while brass, like any metal, does contract in cold weather, the amount of shrinkage is so infinitesimal that it would not cause the spilling of a rack’s contents. Also, naval ships did not store cannonballs in vertical racks; the rolling of the ship made this impractical. Instead, they were stored in holes drilled in horizontal wooden planks known as shot garlands.

Answer 4

Brass Monkey is a type of liquor.

Answer 5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_monkey_%28colloquial_expression%29

Here's a link to wikipedia. Hope this helps.