[Ads-l] monkey wrench follow-up was Re: "Monkey this up"

[Amy West]

So, the 1840 date that the Worcester (MA) Historical Museum gives for 
Loring Coes' invention aligns with the 1839/40 dates for Peter Reitan's 
British sources, but is long after the 1807 cite given on WordOrigins 
from OED3, making Worcester's claim (unsurprisingly) problematic. Again, 
keeping in mind that I'm talking about the object as opposed to the 
lexical term.

---Amy West

On 8/31/18 00:00, ADS-L automatic digest system wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header 
> ----------------------- Sender: American Dialect Society 
> <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> Poster: Andy Bach <afbach at GMAIL.COM> Subject: 
> Re: "Monkey this up" 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>
>> I would have just thought it was a normal mash-up, intentional or not, of
> "muck up" and "throw a monkey in the works".
>
> We used "a monkey wrench" when throwing in things mess up the process.
> Yes, and I know it's named for it's inventor ... or maybe I don't
> http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/more/419/
> It has been suggested that the*monkey *in *monkey wrench*  is an alteration
> (folk etymology) of the inventor=E2=80=99s name, a certain Charles Moncky o=
> f
> Baltimore who allegedly invented it 1858. Unfortunately for this
> explanation, the term is British in origin and predates Moncky by some
> decades.
>
> I always thought a pipe wrench sort of looked a bit like a monkey.



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