Large Scale Central

Brass Monkey

General Discussion
#1

The snow got so deep here in beautiful Deer Park, that when the road grader came by to clean the packed snow off the street, it knocked my mailbox off its post.

Sigh.

The temp outside is cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Now, before you get offended, that is a Naval phrase from the Royal Navy in the days of Nelson. Can any of you enlighten us? :smiley:

I have to dig out the mailbox, thaw it out and dry it, then re-attach it, all before the postman cometh.

Sigh.

He is due 5 minutes ago.

madwolf

#2

A Brass Monkey was a cast brass rack used to vertically store cannon balls next to the gun station. The phrase allegedly comes from when RN ships sailed far enough north or south into those frigid seas, that the brass rack contracted enough in the cold weather that the cannon balls could slip out of the Brass Monkey and would fall to the deck with a startling thud and roll around the deck!

#3

Dang, Vic, you get the prize!

The road grader just came by again.

Sigh. :smiley:

#4
Steve Featherkile said:
The snow got so deep here in beautiful Deer Park, that when the road grader came by to clean the packed snow off the street, it knocked my mailbox off its post.

Sigh.

The temp outside is cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Now, before you get offended, that is a Naval phrase from the Royal Navy in the days of Nelson. Can any of you enlighten us? :smiley:

I have to dig out the mailbox, thaw it out and dry it, then re-attach it, all before the postman cometh.

Sigh.

He is due 5 minutes ago.

madwolf


Sorry, I wasn’t around in the days of Nelson…:wink:

#5

Steve,
…sound like the work of CANOE (the Committee to Ascribe a Naval Origin to Everything)

#6

Apparently an urban legend… http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.asp

#7
Bruce Chandler said:
Apparently an urban legend... http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.asp
I know about this, but Snopes does not always get things right. They forgot about "Full Dress Ship," when the "Brass Monkeys" were brought out and ceremonial cannon balls were placed in them. This was meant to impress the locals, but the cannon balls were usually unservicable and had several coats of pain on them.

I stand by Vic. (Did someone say that it was getting cold in H*ll?) :lol:

#8
Bruce Chandler said:
Steve, ...sound like the work of CANOE (the Committee to Ascribe a Naval Origin to Everything)
Bruce,

You would be surprised at how many of our colloquialisms have roots in seafaring.

Try “Three sheets to the wind,” meaning that the individual had lost control due to imbibing in adult beverages. What is the origin of that?

#9

A sheet is the rope line at the bottom corner of a mainsail, lowest on the mast, and kept the sail under control, if it got loose the sail would flail about, the ship would loose headway, if all three sheets got loose the ship could wallow about uncontrollably with the sails flapping wildly. In reality sail boat were controled and turned by moving the sails, the rudder didnt have anywhere near as much effect as a well experienced master using his ships main assett, her sails. If they got uncontrolable, it was a very dangerous condition as the sails and masts could be torn away in high winds.

This term goes right back to these days of sail, being three sheets to the wind went being so drunk you could hardly control yourself just like a ship thats sheets are lose and flailing about in the wind. There was a sliding scale, one sheet to the wind, you were just tipsy, two sheets you were prety blitzed, three sheets and you were trying to marry one the harbor seals.

I may not know alot about the modern Navy, but in a past life I must have been Lucky Jack Aubrey :wink:

#10

Do you play the fiddle, Vic?

#11

Afraid not, OK I got one, lets see if anyone knows the origin of this one:

Not enough room to swing a cat.

Its not what you think it is…so no PETA whining.

#12
Bruce Chandler said:
Apparently an urban legend... http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.asp
Well, just out of common courtesy, I've got to chime in here a little bit. The first challenge to the "Snopes" opinion is the insinuation that the gun deck was exposed to the weather. The gun deck, is many times, one deck down and also where the crew hung their hammocks and slept.

“Brass monkeys” are displayed with cannonballs on both the USS Constitution (Boston) and the USS Constellation (Baltimore). I do believe it is common during an inspection tour, in port, not underway and certainly questionable during battle stations maneuvers.

#13
Victor Smith said:
Afraid not, OK I got one, lets see if anyone knows the origin of this one:

Not enough room to swing a cat.

Its not what you think it is…so no PETA whining.


This probably has to do with being in close quarters where there is not enough room to swing the cat o’ nine tales. The “cat” was a whip that had 9 (or so) lashes on a single handle. Very effective and removing flesh from its victim.

Jack Aubrey played the violin, but then you knew that… :smiley:

#14

Nope…nice try though

#15

Well, let’s try this, then. Ships at anchor are said to swing with the tide. A cat-boat is a small, dingy like sail boat. Am I close?

#16

Got this from a cat-lover’s site:

“No room to swing a cat” might relate to the cruel sport of roping two cats together by their tails and slinging them over a branch to fight (as in one Kilkenny cats explanation above), though it is generally believed to refer to the compact cat-o-nine-tails used on ships. Swinging cats by their tails as a mark for sportsmen was also once a popular and barbaric amusement, thankfully overtaken by clay pigeon shooting. A longer version, unambiguously about felines, is "no room to swing a cat without getting fur in one’s mouth. As well as referring to the animal, “cat” was an abbreviation for the cat-o’-nine-tails, otherwise known as a flogger. “Cat” is also an old Scottish word meaning a rogue, in which case “swing a cat” referred to the judicial hanging of a condemned criminal. A more plausible explanation is that “no room to swing a cat” was an old nautical term describing the lack of room to manoeuvre using mooring lines a sailing ship called a “Cat” in a confined space such as a dock or narrow waterway A “cat” in this context is a compact merchant vessels (in fact the “cat” with which Dick made his fortune in the Dick Whittington tale was a merchant ship rather than a feline cat). Being compact, any mooring where there was not even room to swing (manoeuvre) such a vessel was very short of space indeed. The arm that projects from a tower or similar to hoist things up is known as a “cathead” and in confined spaces, there would certainly be no room to swing such an arm. Another nautical catty saying is “to cat the anchor”, meaning to secure the anchor on the cathead.

Ok, now what is the origin of “Cat got your tongue?”

#17

Ah, yes.
I recall in ET “A” School on Treasure Island, one of the guys I knew was a Radarman. In those days, part of what they learned was in ET schools.
One day he gets called out of class to the Personnel Orifice.

Off he goes, and when he gets there, the Yeoman (txtless wave) had all these papers laid out, and handed the guy a pen.
Hold on, he says, I ain’t signing nothing until I read it (most of us got too late smart on that bit).

Seems in his enlistment, somehow he had missed signing his enlistment papers.

A one-finger salute is all the folks in the Orifice got.
He had spent just enough time on active duty to be no longer eligible for the draft (big issue then).

He was off base that afternoon, an honest-to-gawd Civilian Under Naval Training.

Which is a step above a sandcrab.

#18
Steve Featherkile said:
...Being compact, any mooring where there was not even room to swing (manoeuvre) such a vessel was very short of space indeed. The arm that projects from a tower or similar to hoist things up is known as a "cathead" and in confined spaces, there would certainly be no room to swing such an arm. Another nautical catty saying is "to cat the anchor", meaning to secure the anchor on the cathead.

Ok, now what is the origin of “Cat got your tongue?”


that last one is it, the full phrase should be “Not enough room to swing by the catshead” The cat being being a projecting beam off the bow that allowed the anchor to be hoisted without banging into the wooden hulls, the catshead being the large bit the anchor chain would be secured to. to “swing by a cats head” ment you had enough room at your anchorage for your ship to swing around with the ingoing or outgoing tides, to have “not enough room to swing by the catshead” ment your anchorage risked running aground if to close to shore or afoul if too close another vessal.

Cat got your tongue goes back to the days when witchcraft was highly beleived in and it was beleived that cats would “steal your tongue (voice)” while you slept if you let one sleep in the same room.

My European ancestors were so firm in their beleive that cats were the devils accompliss that during the middle ages they freely killed them and allowed rats, which they didnt seam to have any concerns with, to overrun the continent, so there was no effective rat policing (cats) to prevent plague flea infested rats from spreading from Italy all the way to Norway. Rather harsh way of thinning the herd (3/4 the continent) to say the least.

I always laugh whenever I here someone brag about how “superior” our european ancestors were, I always remind them that these were the same people so hobbled by superstition and illiteracy that when you look at how stupidly they behaved and what idiotic beleives they espoused (bathing is evil), its truely amazing we manage to survive at all.

Monty Python wasnt too far off in Holy Grail;
“who’s that then?”
“must be a King”
“why?”
“he hasnt got sh*t all over him”

:smiley: