Ok, so a brass monkey was a cannonball holder. When it was cold enough, the brass would shrink more than iron cannonballs and the cannonballs would pop out. Why didn’t they make the monkey out of iron so it would shrink at the same rate?
I question the premise. Is there any evidence at all that that’s what a brass monkey was, or that that was the origin of the phrase?
Notwithstanding the doubtful veracity of the etymology, cannonballs are disposable, ship’s fittings aren’t.
If there were such thing as a fitting called a ‘monkey’ designed to be affixed to a ship’s deck to constrain cannonballs, it wouldn’t be unusual for it to be made of brass, bronze or copper - just because these metals can be polished up to look nice, and to resist corrosion.
Snopessays not so. This has been discussed here too, many timesbefore.
‘Snopes says no’ doesn’t make sense as an answer to the question “why didn’t they do x?”
Because Y never happened. Try reading the Snopes and the cited SDMB threads, then come back if you still don’t understand.
I **know **it’s a false etymology (try reading post #3). ‘No’ isn’t a meaningful answer to a ‘why’ question, is all.
So your question is, “This thing nobody ever actually did, why didn’t they do it differently?”
The same reason it is a false etymology.
They didn’t do something differently in a situation that didn’t exist based on a problem than never happened, because I said so, I guess.
It is a valid question. True, the OP does pose it in a way that makes it look as though he/she believes the false etymology, which I’m sure needs sorting out really urgently, but the point I was trying to make (and clearly failing to get across) is that when someone asks “why wouldn’t someone do X?”, a plain answer of “no” doesn’t make any sense.
OK: Napoleon Bonaparte told them so in a dream.
For GQ? You think there’s a factual answer to that?
Of this the National Maritime Museum comments:
Yes, I do. I don’t say it’s based on a factual premise, but there’s a well-formed question there: "Why didn’t they make the monkey out of iron so it would shrink at the same rate? "
The answer is something like this:
They very probably didn’t make any such thing as the monkey at all, however, the notion of using differing metals for different objects on board a ship is not in itself a surprising one.
The answer to "Why didn’t they make the monkey out of iron so it would shrink at the same rate? " definitely isn’t ‘Uh, NO!’ - because that doesn’t make any sense.
Except he called it a brass minkey.
I invite you to re-read posts 1-5. I think you’ll find that the two people who said “Snopes says no” and “Snopes says not so” were much more likely replying to the question posed by Chronos in post 2, “Is there any evidence at all that that’s what a brass monkey was, or that that was the origin of the phrase?”
If unicorns are allergic to peanut butter, why didn’t they bait unicorn traps with Swiss cheese instead?
It would seem most likely that a brass monkey was a monkey statuette made of brass. The monkey was part of the Chinese zodiac and making a statuette out of brass would be a simple good luck charm. Other cultures also made statues of monkeys out of brass.
The OED gives the first cite of the phrase from Herman Melville’s Omoo:
Note the difference, though – it’s an indication of heat, not cold. Melville uses “nose” instead of “balls.” This probably is a bowdlerization of the original phrase, but it’s clear that he’s referring to a literal representation of a monkey.
Of the goofy phrase-origin explanations that have made the rounds over the past 25 years or so, this is easily among the least plausible. It’s amazing to me that anyone could be taken in by such abject twaddle. (But then, I laughed at the idea that the Nigerian scam could possibly succeed).