Etymology

The Vorder Vixen is an arch manipulator exceeding expectations and skill sets requires an expert performance. Stronzetto has been practicing some stunt cock daggering. If she attends the Solstice garden party she may well have met her match

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Lads, what have you done. :disappointed_relieved:

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If I may propose a Hegelian synthesis of sorts, Suzy may indeed get to a place where she is like Erika Kohut in The Piano Teacher - however it would take substantial effort to get there and for the most part, liaisons would be a slightly austere affair.

The hypnotic erotic powers of Schumann should not be underestimated.

Indeed

VB

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If this were QI, the bells would be ringing by now.

Some references say that the brass triangles that supported stacks of iron cannon-balls on sailing ships were called monkeys and that in cold weather the metal contracted, causing the balls to fall off. The derivation of this phrase is difficult enough to determine without such tosh, so let’s get that oft-repeated story out of the way first:

Cartoons of pirate ships always come complete with the usual icons - parrots, peg legs and pyramids of cannon-balls. That’s artistic license rather than historical fact. The Royal Navy records that, on their ships at least, cannon-balls were stored in planks with circular holes cut into them - not stacked in pyramids. These planks were known as ‘shot garlands’, not monkeys, and they date back to at least 1769, when they were first referred to in print.

On dry land, the obvious way to store cannon-balls seems to be by stacking them. On board ship it’s a different matter. A little geometry shows that a pyramid of balls will topple over if the base is tilted by more than 30 degrees. This tilting, not to mention any sudden jolting, would have been commonplace on sailing ships. It just isn’t plausible that cannon-balls were stacked this way.

For those wanting a bit more detail, here’s the science bit. The coefficient of expansion of brass is 0.000019; that of iron is 0.000012. If the base of the stack were one metre long, the drop in temperature needed to make the ‘monkey’ shrink relative to the balls by just one millimetre, would be around 100 degrees Celsius. Such a small shrinkage wouldn’t have had the slightest effect. In any case, in weather like that, the sailors would probably have better things to think about than coining new phrases

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When I was a kid, no grandparent or aged-other was without a series of brass knick-knacks arrayed on mantle or windowsill; almost universal amongst them, was one of these -
image
…to which I always assumed as a child the saying actually belonged, as a simple expression of hyperbole.

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I always thought it was to do with Pawn Brokers brass balls, but then again I always thought “balls out” was a tennis thing as a kid :slight_smile:

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It’s a fair cop, guv’nor! I hadn’t worked through the science - but doesn’t it work the same way for the brass cannon and iron balls, which wouldn’t have enjoyed particularly tight tolerances (ooh err Mrs!) at the best of times anyway? I’m still left wondering what the origin of the phrase is, now that my comfortable illusion has been shattered. :thinking:

That may be true when a ship is in port (or when it is featured in a painting) but if the yards and sail plan were always perpendicular to the mast the ship would only be able to sail down wind. Square riggers had pretty awful up wind performance (as a sail with a loose leading edge makes a pretty poor foil) a but they could just about sail closer than 90 degrees to the wind and could make progress upwind, but to do that the yards and sail plan would certainly not be perpendicular to the mast.

Today is Friday the 13th April 2018. There will be another Friday the 13th in July.

An irrational fear of Friday the 13th is known as paraskevidekatriaphobia.

Try saying that after 6 pints of heavy with a mouth full of pork scratchings.

Challenge accepted

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The point was that the yards are supposed to be more or less horizontal, allowing for ship movement of course, and all pretty much parallel to one another, even from one mast to the next. A ship languishing in port with only a skeleton crew and poorly maintained would be described as ‘all cocked up’ if her yards were pointing in all directions because the braces were slack or not secured at all, allowing the port end of some yards to droop / starboard end point skywards and the opposite for some of her other yards, destroying the tidy ‘all yards parallel’ look of a well maintained ship.