Just before Christmas I spotted a curious book in a friend’s house called Red Herrings and White Elephants by Albert Jack. Rather like the Guardian’s long-running Notes & Queries feature, it endeavours to explain the derivations of all sorts of commonly used expressions. For example bold as brass, cock and bull, currying favour and acid test.
I now have my own copy (courtesy of Santa Claus) and was pleasantly surprised by the number of expressions which have nautical derivations. Some are fairly obvious – three sheets to the wind, pass with flying colours and cut and run for example. Others are a little more obscure – to have someone over a barrel derives from the Middle Ages custom of draping someone who has drowned (or partly drowned) over a barrel in order to clear their lungs (or not); you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours is taken from the tradition of sailors having to flog their mates for wrongdoings; to flog a dead horse from the Horse Latitudes 30 degrees either side of the Equator (the lack of wind in those parts tended to stall the progress of the ship much to the delight of the crew, most of whom were paid by the day).
But the one that caught my eye particularly was freeze the balls off a brass monkey. The “brass monkey” being a tray made in brass and with indentations to hold cannon balls at on an 18th century ship’s deck (brass being non-corrosive). The cannon balls would usually form the base of a pyramid; however the metallurgists among my readers will know that brass freezes more quickly than iron and will thus contract causing, in chilly weather, the balls to come off the “monkey” and clatter around the deck.
