True or False??

[matriarch]

I frequently get 'did you know this' pieces of information sent to me, and quite often, even if they aren't true they really appeal to me, like the one below. I like it so much I'm not even going to refer to my trusty Snopes to check it out:

It was necessary to keep a good supply of canon balls near the cannon on war ships. But how to prevent them from rolling about the deck was the problem. The best storage method devised was to stack them as a square based pyramid, with one ball on top, resting on four, resting on nine, which rested on sixteen.

Thus, a supply of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon. There was only one problem -- how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding/rolling from under the others. The solution was a metal plate with16 round indentations, called a Monkey. But if this plate was made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it.

The solution to the rusting problem was to make Brass Monkeys.

Few landlubbers realise that brass contracts much more and much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannon balls would come right off the monkey.

Thus, it was quite literally, cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

And all this time, you thought that was a vulgar expression, didn't you?

Anyone else got any favourite plausible explanations?

 

[Liar]

Considering that this is the first time I've ever heard said expression, not really.

But good story. I love those little tidbits too.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

Considering that this is the first time I've ever heard said expression, not really.

But good story. I love those little tidbits too.

The only place I ever heard it was a Beastie Boys song (that I hated, just in case anyone was wondering ).

 

[fieryjen]

Ooh, I like that.

 

[epiphany65]

I love facts and trivia of this sort too. The Straight Dope is a good, fun site for finding out useless facts:
http://www.straightdope.com/

 

[oggbashan]

Sorry, Matriarch - this isn't true.

Cannon balls were never stored in pyramids on ships. They would have rolled off in any sea other than a flat calm. They were kept in shot garlands or shot racks, firmly fixed against the rolling of a ship in bad weather.

Brass monkeys didn't get associated with balls until the 20th Century. Until then it was "Cold enough to freeze the whiskers/nose/ears off a brass monkey."

Cannon balls were sometimes stored in pyramids on land beside gun emplacements but only for obsessive tidiness and before inspection by senior officers. Iron cannon balls could rust to each other so they were usually kept in racks under cover until needed.

Og

 

[matriarch]

Sorry, Matriarch - this isn't true.

Cannon balls were never stored in pyramids on ships. They would have rolled off in any sea other than a flat calm. They were kept in shot garlands or shot racks, firmly fixed against the rolling of a ship in bad weather.

Brass monkeys didn't get associated with balls until the 20th Century. Until then it was "Cold enough to freeze the whiskers/nose/ears off a brass monkey."

Cannon balls were sometimes stored in pyramids on land beside gun emplacements but only for obsessive tidiness and before inspection by senior officers. Iron cannon balls could rust to each other so they were usually kept in racks under cover until needed.

Og

I know, I knew it wouldn't be true, because it's such a great story. I refrained from checking on Snopes.com, but Min couldn't resist it, she had to look and told me it was a load of crap.

But it was a good story.

 

[matriarch]

By and large

Meaning: On the whole; generally speaking; all things considered.

Origin
Many phrases are wrongly ascribed a nautical origin just because they sound like mariner's lingo. This one really is and, like many such nautical phrases, it originated in the days of sail.

To get a sense of the original meaning of the phrase we need to understand the nautical terms 'by' and 'large'. 'Large' is easier, so we'll start there. When the wind is blowing from some compass point behind a ship's direction of travel then it is said to be 'large'. Sailors have used this term for centuries. For example, this piece from Richard Hakluyt's The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1591:

"When the wind came larger we waied anchor and set saile."

When the wind is in that favourable large direction the largest square sails may be set and the ship is able to travel in whatever downwind direction the captain sees fit.

'By' is a rather more difficult concept for landlubbers like me. In simplified terms it means 'in the general direction of'. Sailors would say to be 'by the wind' is to face into the wind or within six compass points of it.

The earliest known reference to 'by and large' in print is from Samuel Sturmy, in The Mariners Magazine, 1669:

"Thus you see the ship handled in fair weather and foul, by and learge."

by and largeTo sail 'by and large' required the ability to sail not only as earlier square-rigged ships could do, i.e. downwind, but also against the wind. At first sight, and for many non-sailors I'm sure second and third sight too, it seems impossible that a sailing ship could progress against the wind. They can though. The physics behind this is better left to others. Suffice it to say that it involves the use of triangular sails which act like aeroplane wings and provide a force which drags the ship sideways against the wind. By the use of this and by careful angling of the rudder the ship can make progress towards the wind.

The 19th century windjammers like Cutty Sark were able to maintain progress 'by and large' even in bad wind conditions by the use of many such aerodynamic triangular sails and large crews of able seamen.

 

[matriarch]

Hard and fast

Meaning: Rigidly adhered to - without doubt or debate.

Origin
This is a nautical term. A ship that was hard and fast was simply one that was firmly beached on land.

The term must have been well-known by the early 19th century as it was use in a figurative sense then. For example, The [London] Times, January 1820:

"She was laid before the fire, at about a yard distance, and was hard and fast asleep."

The Sailor's Word-Book, William Henry Smyth's 1867 nautical dictionary, defines the term:

"Hard and fast. Said of a ship on shore."

 

[gauchecritic]

'Having it large' as a popular phrase in the 90's I always thought was just a made up expression. Then I heard an octogenarian use it in exactly the same manner "having a good time" which she insisted she had used as a youth.

Maybe that's the sailing thing again.

 

[jomar]

Sorry, Matriarch - this isn't true.

...

Balderdash!

Mat, so where did 'colder than a witch's tit' come from?

 

[oggbashan]

Balderdash!
...

Original 16thC meaning "frothy liquid".

So that's a pint of foaming ale?

Og

 

[jomar]

Original 16thC meaning "frothy liquid".

So that's a pint of foaming ale?

Og

Works for me. Cheers!

 

[oggbashan]

Works for me. Cheers!

And I'm having one too.

Colder than a witch's tit?

A witch was supposed to have a third tit to feed her familiar on. That tit need not be visible on the skin's surface but would be insensible to pain. Suspected witches were "pricked" with a pin until the site of the tit was found. The Witchfinder General "found" many witches this way. The tit was "cold" according to the psuedoscience of "humours" Hot, Cold, Wet, Dry". Skin is usually "Hot" so a part of the skin that feels no pain must be "Cold".

Og

 

[jomar]

And I'm having one too.

Colder than a witch's tit?

A witch was supposed to have a third tit to feed her familiar on. That tit need not be visible on the skin's surface but would be insensible to pain. Suspected witches were "pricked" with a pin until the site of the tit was found. The Witchfinder General "found" many witches this way. The tit was "cold" according to the psuedoscience of "humours" Hot, Cold, Wet, Dry". Skin is usually "Hot" so a part of the skin that feels no pain must be "Cold".

Og

Well done, Og. Have another on me.

 

[oggbashan]

Well done, Og. Have another on me.

Thanks.

Since one of my wives (when I'm Henry VIII), Ann Boleyn, was supposed to have a third nipple, I had to know about witches' tits.

Og aka Henry The Eighth I Am

 

[jomar]

Thanks.

Since one of my wives (when I'm Henry VIII), Ann Boleyn, was supposed to have a third nipple, I had to know about witches' tits.

Og aka Henry The Eighth I Am

A catchy tune.

 

[oggbashan]

More about witches:

My alter ego, Jeanne D'Artois, was reputed to be a witch but when the case came to trial she had vanished from her prison cell with no sign to show how she had gone.

Of course the prosecutors claimed that she could only have done that by witchcraft and asked for Jeanne to be convicted in absentia.

The judge threw out the case because the defendant appeared to be no longer within the jurisdiction of the court. He couldn't care less whether Jeanne was in another country, state, or the infernal regions. He couldn't try someone who just wasn't there despite the best efforts of the state to imprison her.

So was Jeanne a witch?

Most contemporaries think she was and a very vindictive one.

Jeanne assures me she's not but doesn't explain how she is 700 years old and doesn't look a day over 35.

Og

 

[jeanne_d_artois]

Og's maligning me.

I'm only 670 years old.

I attribute my looks to my grandmother's secret recipe for age-defying cream.

Jeanne

And a few hundred years of Yoga.

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

Other favorite nautical terms

My grandad was a submariner, and evidently he taught my mom some choice words and phrases. The one she often used was "rotten fucking god-damn piece of shit bastard son of a bitch!"


I have no idea what that means in nautical terms but I'm sure the story behind has to be charming.

 

[trysail]

"Between the devil and the deep blue sea"



Ahh, a wonderful thread! Idioms with nautical etymologies.


Here's another (much to my surprise, Wikipedia listed it)— this is Wikipedia's explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_The_Devil_And_The_Deep_Blue_Sea

"Between the devil and the deep blue sea" is an idiom meaning to choose between two undesirable situations (equivalent to "between a rock and a hard place").

Its original meaning may be that of a nautical reference citing the deep blue sea and a "devil"- a piece of wood or joint that is difficult to reach on a ship.

According to the "International Maritime Dictionary" by René de Kerchove, the devil is 1. The seam in a wooden deck which bounds the waterway. It is so-called from its difficulty of access in calking. 2. A seam in the planking of a wooden ship on or below the waterline.

If sailors fell from a footrope under a yardarm, they would either land on the deck (within the devil plank) or in the water (outside of the devil plank). Either option is likely fatal...

 

[trysail]

"Three sheets to the wind"

Meaning: Pissed (U.K.), dangerously drunk and thus a hazard to oneself.

Origin
When aboard a sailing vessel, one very definitely does not want to discover that the vessel is "three sheets to the wind."

A vessel in such a state is about to execute what is usually an unintended, unexpected and potentially dangerous tack or jibe (i.e., abrupt change of course or direction). Sheets are the control lines attached to the clew of a sail permitting adjustment of the sheeting angle and the sail's angle of attack with respect to wind direction. In a normal position, the sheets of a vessel's sails hold the sails taut and secure the sail on the leeward (as opposed to the windward) side of the vessel. If one observes a sheet that is cleated on the windward side of a vessel, it is generally a good idea to either duck or seek cover— all hell is about to break loose.

 

[matriarch]

Ahh, a wonderful thread! Idioms with nautical etymologies.


Here's another (much to my surprise, Wikipedia listed it)— this is Wikipedia's explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_The_Devil_And_The_Deep_Blue_Sea

"Between the devil and the deep blue sea" is an idiom meaning to choose between two undesirable situations (equivalent to "between a rock and a hard place").

Its original meaning may be that of a nautical reference citing the deep blue sea and a "devil"- a piece of wood or joint that is difficult to reach on a ship.

According to the "International Maritime Dictionary" by René de Kerchove, the devil is 1. The seam in a wooden deck which bounds the waterway. It is so-called from its difficulty of access in calking. 2. A seam in the planking of a wooden ship on or below the waterline.

If sailors fell from a footrope under a yardarm, they would either land on the deck (within the devil plank) or in the water (outside of the devil plank). Either option is likely fatal...

From 'The Phrase Finder':

The first recorded citation of 'the Devil and the deep sea' in print is in Robert Monro's His expedition with the worthy Scots regiment called Mac-keyes, 1637:

"I, with my partie, did lie on our poste, as betwixt the devill and the deep sea."

The seafaring theory is plausible at least, but does it really hold water? Two factors count against it. Firstly, it doesn't really explain the meaning. The devil on a ship isn't inherently dangerous. Secondly, does the phrase pre-date the nautical term 'devil'? We've no evidence to show the word in that context until over two hundred years after the first sighting of the phrase. If the phrase really does pre-date the word then the nautical derivation, by that route at least, is clearly incorrect. The onus falls on the nautical believers to provide the evidence.

CANOE don't quite convince with this one. On balance it seems wise to stay on dry land and stick with the Devil we know.

 

[matriarch]

Let the cat out of the bag

Meaning: Disclose a secret.

Origin

There are two commonly heard suggested origins of this phrase. One relates to the fraud of substituting a cat for a piglet at markets. If you let the cat out of the bag you disclosed the trick - and avoided buying a pig in a poke (bag). This form of trickery is long alluded to in the language and 'pigs in a poke' are recorded as early as 1530.

The other theory is that the 'cat' referred to is the cat o' nine tails, which was used to flog ill-disciplined sailors. Again, this has sufficient historical record to be at least possible. The cat o' nine tails was widely used and was referred to in print many years prior to the first use of 'let the cat out of the bag'. The 'nine tails' part of the name derives from the three strands of cord that the rope lashes were made from. Each of the cords were in turn made from three strands of string. When unbraided a piece of rope separated into nine strings. The 'cat' part no doubt alluded to the scratches that the knotted ends of the lash made on the victim's back, like those from a cat's claws.

Of the two explanations, the 'pig in a poke' derivation is the more plausible, although I can find no direct documentary evidence to link 'letting the cat out of the bag' to the selling of livestock. Versions of the phrase exist in both Dutch - 'Een kat in de zak kopen' and in German - 'Die Katze im Sack kaufen'. These both translate loosely as 'to buy a cat in a bag', i.e. to buy false goods.

The cat o' nine tails story is dubious at best. It is reported that the lashes were sometimes stored in bags, but the suggested nautical punishment origin fails at the critical point, in that it doesn't match the 'disclose a secret' meaning of the phrase.

The first known use of the phrase in print that I have found is in a 1760 edition of The London Magazine:

"We could have wished that the author... had not let the cat out of the bag."

There are several other literary references to the phrase in the 1760s and 1770s, most of which place it in quotations marks - a sure sign of it being not commonly understood and consequently, newly coined.

Cats feature very often in English proverbs:

A cat may look at a king - 1546
All cats are grey in the dark - 1596
Curiosity killed the cat - 1921
There are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream - 1855
When the cat is away, the mice will play - 1607

This routine appearance of cats in the language is no doubt a consequence of them being widely kept as mousers and pets in domestic houses. As to 'who let the cats out?', we can't be certain; but it probably wasn't a sailor.

 

[matriarch]

The origins of 'double cross'

Phrase:Double cross

Meaning: An act of treachery, perpetrated on a previous partner in a deceit.

Origin

The term 'double-cross' has been used in various contexts for many centuries, usually as a straightforward reference to the shape of two crosses, as in the architectural design of cathedrals for example. That meaning is unrelated to the current figurative 'cheating' usage of 'double cross', which dates only from the late 18th century.

To find the origin of the expression 'double cross' as it is now used, we need to look first at one of the many meanings of the noun 'cross'. From the mid 1700s, a 'cross' was a transaction that wasn't 'square', i.e. not honest and fair. The term was most often used in a sporting context, where a cross was a match that was lost as a result of a corrupt collusory arrangement between the principals involved. You might expect that a 'double cross' was a deceit in which two parties collude in a swindle and one of them later goes back on the arrangement, crossing both the original punters and his erstwhile partner in crime. Although that is the case, the term 'double' doesn't here mean simply 'two times'. 'To double' had long been used to mean 'to make evasive turns or shifts; to act deceitfully'. This derives from the imagery of someone doubling back over a previous route. This 'doubling' gave rise to the term 'double dealing', which has been used since the early 1500s to refer to someone duplicitously saying one thing and doing another, for example, a 'double agent'.

Given that, by the mid 1700s, the language included both 'cross' and 'double', it wasn't a great leap to introduce the term 'double cross' to refer to aggravated duplicity. Double crossing dealings are the precise opposite of those that are 'fair and square', but the two expressions do have one thing in common - they are both tautological. 'Fair' and 'square' both mean honest and 'double' and 'cross' both mean dishonest.

The earliest reference that I have found to 'double cross' in print is in David Garrick's 1768 farce The Irish Widow. The play centres around various practical jokes, and the phrase occurs as a play on words between two of the meanings of cross - 'marriage' and 'swindle':

Sir Patrick O'Neale: I wish you had a dare swate crater [dear sweet creature] of a daughter like mine, that we might make a double cross of it.
Mr. Whittle: (aside) That would be a double cross, indeed!

The sporting usage was defined a few years later, in an early self-help tome, written by 'Two Citizens of the World' and 'Containing Hints to the Unwary to Avoid the Stratagems of Swindlers, Cyprians and Lawyers', i.e. How To Live In London, 1828:

"A double cross, is where a boxer receives money to lose, and afterwards goes in and beats his man."

A systematic policy of double crossing was given the UK government's official, if covert, sanction during the WWII. In 1941, MI5 set up a military counter espionage unit called The Twenty Committee, chaired by John Masterman. The naming of this unit clearly linked the double crosses of the Roman numerals for twenty (XX) with one of the unit's aims, which was to 'double cross' Germany by coercing German spies to become English double agents. The coercion was less than subtle; captured German agents were given an offer they couldn't refuse, i.e. feed false information back to Germany or be shot.

During the Cold War, following the publishing of Masterman's The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939-1945, in 1972, the terms 'double cross' and 'double agent' became much more commonplace.