Posted on 08/04/2002 5:13:20 AM PDT by WaterDragon
(Our pal, Camber, the old son-of-a-gun, found this one in his email box. It's been circulating on the net. Is it myth?)
In the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters carried iron cannons. Those cannon fired round iron balls. It was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon. But how to keep them from rolling about the deck....?(snip)
Click here to read complete article.
As for Brass Monkey...........
In the heyday of the sailing ship, every ship had to have cannon for protection. Cannon of the times required round iron cannon balls. The master wanted to store the cannon balls such that they could be of instant use when needed, yet not roll around the gun deck. The solution was to stack them in a square based pyramid next to the cannon. The top level of the stack had one ball, the next level down had four, the next had nine, the next had 16, and so on. Four levels would provide a stack of 30 cannon balls. The only real problem was how to keep the bottom level from sliding out from under the weight of the higher levels. To do this, they devised a small plate ("monkey") with one rounded indentation for each cannon ball in the bottom layer. When iron was used to make this plate ("monkey"), the cannon balls would rust to the plate. As a result, these plates were made of brass to prevent this problem-- thus the name "brass monkey." When temperature falls, brass contracts in size faster than iron. As it got cold on the gun decks, the indentations in the brass monkey would get smaller than the iron cannon balls they were holding. If the temperature got cold enough, the bottom layer would pop out of the indentations spilling the entire pyramid over the deck. Thus it was, quite literally, "COLD ENOUGH TO FREEZE THE BALLS OFF A BRASS MONKEY." And all this time some of you thought we were talking dirty. —Author Unknown
And Archy.....as to the Missing Hmong ect ect , I suspect that some very rich Christans In Action got a cut of that Chiefs miscount......:o)
Stay Safe !
Hi Squantos, One of the flying magazines two or three years ago had a debate going about this topic. Some were claiming 30 cal WW I belts, some 50 cal and others various different explanations. But they were all wrong.
The phrase refers to chain in muzzle loading naval guns. I doubt they had 50 cal machine guns during the reign of Henry VIII :}
You know, we sure see a lot of dogmatic statements and explanations of things nowadays that are just flat wrong. Also see a lot of quotations attributed to famous people who did not make them. But maybe that's not new, just spreads faster with the web I guess.
One real famous example you hear all the time is about something having "bugs" in it came from the first computer. Only problem is this is an old saying that derived from literally having bugs in it--like some Army chow. It definitely predates the 40s.
Another word was doughboy. Everbody thinks of it as dating from WW I but it goes back to the Mexican War. Or to use that one in a sentence:
Rockpile's Great-great Grandfather was a doughboy gravel-cruncher when he was Captain Arthur MacArthur's First Sergeant in New Mexico Territory.
By the by, he also said that a lot of officers like to take some of their ncos they trusted with them when they went to new commands cause they didn't know what type of finangling might have been going on before they got there. Had never heard of this but I reckon it was so.
When extream ice conditions prevailed the ice ,as it formed ,would get in between the individual cannon balls and make the stack rise and or deform enough to make one or two fall off the top.
I have used ice to break rock as the chinese quarry workers did in days past. Ice is very powerful and would IMHO and experience knock the balls off a brass monkey if sea spray and extream cold were contributing to the buildup and expansion.
Stay Safe !
If you have ever seen the 19th century poem about the English ships going to fight the Scottish freebooter--the one with the phrase "though I be wounded I am not slain, I'll lay me down and bleed awhile and then I'll rise and fight again"--well there is a statement in it about loading up nine yards of chain for the cannons.{To take down rigging I presume}. This poem was based, I think, on a much older song/poem from maybe the 1500s.
I'll see if I can find a link for this.
Possibly the epic*The Earl of Morray*? I believe you may well be correct about the derivation of the *whole 9 yards* reference being of Scottish derivation, but from another context, the payment of loyalist/mercenary Scots with yardage of Warclan plaid, suitable for kilts or other uses. One of those who had fought well but had been slain or seriously injured was said to have truly earned his *whole 9 yards....*
This was a bit before the general introduction of belt-fed automatic weapons, though the British *Puckle Gun*, a forerunner of the Gatling, was not so far in the future. The details of it's patent, from a period during which Crown Patent Law stipulated that descriptions of the hopeful designs must be submitted in poetic form, makes for entertaining, as well as fascinating, reading and research.
-archy-/-
My copy of "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" disputes that. It claims:
. . it arose among construction workers, the nine yards referring to the maximum cpapcity a cement-mixer truck can carry - nine cubic yards of cement.
From:
http://members.aol.com/MorelandC/HaveOrigins.htm
A very colorful phrase, one needs to be careful when using "balls to the wall".
Although its real origin is very benign, most people assume it is a reference to testicles.
In fact it is from fighter planes. The "balls" are knobs atop the plane's throttle control. Pushing the throttle all the way forward, to the wall of the cockpit, is to apply full throttle.
Alternatively,
Early railroad locomotives were powered by steam engines. Those engines typically had a mechanical governor. These governors consisted of two weighted steel balls mounted at the ends of two arms, jointed and attached to the end of a vertical shaft that was connected to the interior of the engine. The entire assembly is encased in a housing.
The shafts and the weighted balls rotate at a rate driven by the engine speed. As engine speed increases, the assembly rotates at a faster speed and centrifugal force causes the weighted balls to hinge upward on the arms.
At maximum engine speed - controlled by these governors - centrifugal force causes the two weighted balls to rotate with their connecting shafts parallel to the ground and thereby nearly touching the sides - the walls - of their metal housing.
So, an engineer driving his steam locomotive at full throttle was going "balls to the wall". The expression came to be used commonly to describe something going full speed.
This is fun stuff!
;)
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