cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey
(slang) Extremely cold.
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#1·Apr 26, 2026
(slang) Extremely cold.
It was a bitterly cold, snowy and wind-blown evening in early January when I told my son that it was, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey." Needless to say, he laughed and agreed with me.
Origin: . There is a discredited theory that it refers to a brass container for cannon balls on a British man-of-war, and a somewhat more plausible theory that "brass monkey" used to refer to a cannon on a man-of-war. Origin information sourced from Wiktionary contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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Other words near "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey" (C)
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