Idiom
brass monkeys
Meaning
Very cold.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“It's brass monkeys outside today.”
“We wanted to go for a walk, but it's brass monkeys out there.”
“The old fisherman pulled his coat tighter, muttering that it was brass monkeys on the quay at dawn.”
Examples
simple
“It's brass monkeys outside today.”
contextual
“We wanted to go for a walk, but it's brass monkeys out there.”
complex
“The old fisherman pulled his coat tighter, muttering that it was brass monkeys on the quay at dawn.”
Origin
From the phrase cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey - supposedly a reference to the brass container for cannon balls on a British man-of-war (but this seems to have been discredited).
Key words
Related idioms
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