to "monkey-paw" (obs.)

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED lacks this, as does HDAS because I couldn't find an American ex.

  1832 Basil Hall _Fragments of Voyages and Travels_ (Series 2) II 192: The men...fly to the proper points, "monkey paw" the split sails, clear the ropes,...and in a very few moments reduce the whole disaster to the dimensions of a common occurrence.

  Hall (1788-1844) became a prominent British travel writer after his retirement from the Navy in 1824.

  The redoubtable scholar-sailor-scientist-numismatist Adm. William H. Smyth omits "monkey-paw" from the _Sailor's Word-Book_ (1867), but does list

  "MONK'S SEAM. That made after sewing the edges of sails together, one over the other, by stitching through the centre of the seam."

  JL

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