Bless your socks off

[Michael Quinion]

This story about the origin of the brass monkey story is widely
told and believed. But there are immense difficulties with it.

Firstly, warships of the period stored their immediate stock of
round shot for the guns in wooden racks fixed to the ship's
sides (cut with holes slightly smaller than the shot, very like
an egg rack). These were called garlands and can be seen in
illustrations of the period.

It is impossible to imagine any sensible commander permitting
shot to be piled in heaps on a deck that might be pitching at an
angle of forty degrees or more at times.

Secondly, there is no reference extant that I can find of the
term 'monkey' being applied to any such construction. There was
an eighteenth century gun called that, and the ships' boys who
brought gunpowder up from the magazine were called powder
monkeys, but that's all.

But the clincher is basic physics: the coefficients of expansion
of iron and brass are not so different; over the range of
temperatures likely to be encountered on the deck of a warship
at sea the differential movement is a fraction of a millimetre,
not enough to cause a whisker of a problem.

The story is obviously daft.

Now to the interesting part: where did it really come from?

My guess is that it was a bit of evocative British Indian Army
slang relating to cold night temperatures in the hills, with
thoughts of temple statues in mind. But there's no evidence for
that either, alas.

--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
<editor at worldwidewords.org>
<http://www.worldwidewords.org/>