Brass Monkey is the name of various people and things. In several cases, the people and things were named after, or as an allusion to, the colloquial expression.
brass monkey is awesome The phrase cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey is sometimes used by English speakers. ... A Brass Monkey is a cocktail consisting of equal parts vodka, rum, and orange juice. ... Brass Monkey are an English folk band from the 1980s, who reunited in the late 1990s. ... Brass Monkey is a British film made in 1948, starring Carroll Levis, formerly a radio variety show host, and American actress Carole Landis. ... Licensed to Ill is the debut hip hop album by the Beastie Boys, released in 1986 (see 1986 in music). ... Astro City, vol. ... The Cunard Line formerly Cunard White Star Line is the British cruise line that operates the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) and RMS Queen Mary 2 (QM2) ocean liners. ... Midnights Children cover Midnights Children (ISBN 039451470X) is a 1980 novel by Salman Rushdie. ...
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The word "monkey" is of uncertain origin; its first known usage was in 1498 when it was used in the literary work Reynard the Fox as the name of the son of Martin the Ape.
It has often been claimed that the "brassmonkey" was a holder or storage rack in which cannon balls (or shot) were stacked on a ship.
Supposedly when the "monkey" with its stack of cannon ball became cold, the contraction of iron cannon balls led to the balls falling through or off of the "monkey." This explanation appears to be a legend of the sea without historical justification.
Although the boys bringing charges to the guns from the magazine were known as powder monkeys and there is evidence that a type of cannon was called a monkey in the mid seventeenth century, there’s no evidence that the word was ever applied to a plate under a pile of cannon shot.
What the written evidence shows is that the term brassmonkey was quite widely distributed in the US from about the middle of the nineteenth century and was applied in all sorts of situations, not just weather.
To use a hyperbolical phrase of Shorty’s, ‘It was ’ot enough to melt the nose h’off a brassmonkey.’ ” It seems much more likely that the image here is of a real brassmonkey, or more probably still a set of them.
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