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Fodder for history buffs

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superboyac:
From 40hz' link above:
It has often been claimed that the "brass monkey" was a holder or storage rack in which cannon balls (or shot) were stacked on a ship. Supposedly when the "monkey" with its stack of cannon ball became cold, the contraction of iron cannon balls led to the balls falling through or off of the "monkey." This explanation appears to be a legend of the sea without historical justification. In actuality, ready service shot was kept on the gun or spar decks in shot racks (also known as shot garlands in the Royal Navy) which consisted of longitudinal wooden planks with holes bored into them, into which round shot (cannon balls) were inserted for ready use by the gun crew. These shot racks or garlands are discussed in: Longridge, C. Nepean. The Anatomy of Nelson's Ships. (Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 1981): 64. A top view of shot garlands on the upper deck of a ship-of-the-line is depicted in The Visual Dictionary of Ships and Sailing. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 1991): 17.
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40hz:
I understand the Navy also has a copy of the real lyrics to Louie-Louie (Watch it now. Watch it!)  ;)

Unfortunately, they're classified.   :-\ ;D

superboyac:
I understand the Navy also has a copy of the real lyrics to Louie-Louie (;)Watch it now. Watch it!)

Unfortunately, they're classified.   :-\ ;D
-40hz (January 07, 2011, 04:11 PM)
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It's in the same place where they keep the lyrics to Yellow Ledbetter.  I saw it once in Warehouse 13; right next to the box with the bag and the sand.

mwb1100:
I hope I'm not a party pooper, but most (if not all) of these explanations of phrase origins are fables.  Thankfully, the actual origins often still quite interesting.

There are several people who make serious study of this kind of thing, and one of them publishes a newsletter that I find to be an entertaining read.

Here are links to what the "Word Detective" has to say about many of these stories:

An arm and a leg - (I found it quite surprising that the oldest print use of this phrase he found dates only to 1956!)
The phrase "cost an arm and a leg," meaning to cost a great deal or an exorbitant amount, is simply a hyperbolic figure of speech comparing the cost of something to the grievous loss of two important limbs.  There isn't really any "story" behind the phrase, other than the desire of whoever came up with the metaphor to impress the listener with the outrageous price of something.  Unfortunately, as is often the case, we have no way of knowing exactly who coined the phrase, although it hasn't been around as long as you might think.  Surprisingly, the earliest known use of "cost an arm and a leg" in print dates back only to 1956, in Billie Holiday's autobiography "Lady Sings the Blues"-http://www.word-detective.com/032404.html
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chairman:
"Chairman" dates back to the 17th century as does, interestingly, the shorter form "chair" meaning the person in charge of a meeting. "Chair" in this sense actually had an odd sort of double birth. In the 1600s and subsequently, the noun "chair" was used as symbolic shorthand (a process known as "metonymy") for the person who sat in the chair of power, much as "the Crown" was used to refer to the King or Queen or "the White House" is used to mean the current presidential administration-http://www.word-detective.com/112304.html
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bigwig:
And now onward to the wonderful world of wigs. Once upon a time (the 1700's, to be precise), there was no hairspray and no blow-driers. Every day was a bad hair day, as it had been for most of human history. Consequently, almost everybody above the poverty line -- men, women, and sometimes even children -- wore wigs. But not all wigs were equal. While Joe Schmoe trudged through life wearing his ratty little two-shilling bargain number from Wigges 'n Stuffe, Lord Gotrocks sported a luxurious, expensive, and, of course, very large wig. Regular folks found these rich people and their fancy wigs so annoying that by the early 1800's "bigwig" had become a mocking slang term for the wealthy and powerful. And though the wigs are mostly gone (or at least a lot smaller), "bigwig" is still used as slang for someone who probably isn't as important as he thinks he is.-http://www.word-detective.com/100699.html
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Mind your own beeswax:
The story you've heard about "beeswax hiding pock-marks" has been circulating on the internet for quite a while and, like most stories of this type, was almost certainly dreamt up out of whole cloth by someone working backwards to explain the phrase "mind your own beeswax." While it is true that beeswax (defined in the literal sense by the Oxford English Dictionary as "The wax secreted by bees as the material of their combs?") has long been used in cosmetics, the phrase "mind your own beeswax," meaning "mind your own business," has nothing to do with the wax of bees. "Beeswax" in this phrase is simply a jocular variation on the word "business." It's a little joke, in other words, and quite a useful one at that, since telling someone to "mind your own beeswax" conveys the meaning of "mind your own business" without any unpleasant overtones of hostility. "Mind your own beeswax" first appeared around 1934. -http://www.word-detective.com/072302.html
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P's and Q's - (he's not certain of the true origin, but leans towards the following)
Another theory, drawn from the schoolroom, is that any child approaching the mystery of penmanship soon discovers that the lowercase "p" is devilishly easy to confuse with the lowercase "q." Thus, the theory goes, generations of teachers exhorting their small charges to "mind your p's and q's" created a enduring metaphor for being attentive and careful

...

I'd pick the schoolroom theory as being the most likely source. It makes sense right out of the box and sounds like the sort of thing teachers say.
-http://www.word-detective.com/042805.html
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Brass Monkeys
The slang term "brass monkeys" is actually a shortening of the phrase "cold enough to freeze the tail off a brass monkey." (Common variants of the phrase almost invariably specify a more risque element of the monkey's anatomy, but we'll go with "tail" for purposes of this column.) While a brass monkey might seem an outlandish item, such knickknacks were, in fact, quite popular in Victorian drawing rooms, usually found in sets of three, set in the classic kitsch "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" pose. Given that brass monkeys were the Lava Lamps of the age and thus never far from the Victorian mind, their use in the phrase is not surprising. Of course, given the shocking dearth of brass monkeys in modern living rooms, it's also not surprising that the phrase seems so mysterious to us today. -http://www.word-detective.com/back-r.html
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And a 'debunking' of the naval origin story:
The infuriatingly popular (but nonetheless incorrect) explanation for the phrase that you encountered usually posits that the cannonballs were piled into a pyramid within the "monkey" frame. This is indeed a common practice at historical monuments on dry land, but would be a terrible idea on a deck rolling and pitching at sea.

Evidently, at least in the British Royal Navy, cannonballs were stored in holes cut in planks mounted close to the guns, an elegant method assuring both security and easy access. Furthermore, while the young boys assigned to bring powder to the cannon deck from the ship's magazine were apparently known as "powder monkeys," there is no record in contemporaneous accounts of life at sea (which are plentiful) of any storage device called a "monkey."-http://www.word-detective.com/111606C.html
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Anyway, I hope that anyone who considers this post as putting a damper on any fun this topic might be, should visit the Word Detective site where you'll find many well-researched and entertaining explanations of word and phrase origins.

superboyac:
mwb1100, you just gave me a site to include in my daily rotation!

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