This Sea Scouting program is new to me.

It seems that our Scouts spend a lot of time reminding me that it's line and not rope!!

I am very slowly starting to learn a lot of the nautical terms.

So far I have not started sending e-mails which start with "Ahoy!"

A little while back we had a thread on profanity.

While I'll admit to not being an angel and have been known to engage tongue before brain. There are some expressions I try not to use in mixed company.

One I didn't use was "Freeze the balls off a brass monkey"

Then I found out where it comes from:

Between a ship's guns were lip-edged brass trays called Monkeys which held pyramid stacks of cannon balls. In cold weather the brass tray would contract faster than the iron cannon balls and the balls would go rolling about on the deck. In this case it was said to be cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

I also found that "Son of a Gun" is from When in port, and with crew restricted to the ship for any extended period of time, wives and ladies of easy virtue often were allowed to live aboard along with the crew. Occasionally children were born aboard and a convenient place for this was between the guns on the gun deck. If the child's father was unknown, the child was entered in the ship's log as Son of a Gun.

So now I'm one day older and a tiny bit wiser!!

Eamonn.

thanx for the lesson on where those sayings come from I love those in my family we call those sayings from a Hillbilly Sage due to my Grandfather who said things like that all the time ( my Favorite is "Happier then a gopher in soft dirt") I use saings like that all the time and have even heard my 8 yr old use them .

Our guys are still using the phrase "colder than a well digger's butt" stated by a Dad regarding the temperature Sunday morning on our last campout. Gotta say, I have never heard that one before.

Snopes is your friend, Eamon :-)

http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.htm

http://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/sonofgun.htm

 

"Cook enough for the threshing crew"

 

"Colder'n a well digger's hob nail"

 

"Slower'n molasses in January"

 

"I've seen cleaner hands on a garage clock"

fling beat me to it.

 

Neither of those stories holds water, Eamonn! Both are urban legends.

Seems that even when I try to get edumacated, fings don't work out.

Eamonn.