freeze a brass monkey
- idiom
- Archaic
:
hace un frío que pela
- They say January here can freeze a brass monkey, so dress warmly.
Examples
-
It was so cold last night it could freeze a brass monkey outside.
-
When winter hits, it can really freeze a brass monkey here.
-
The icy wind this morning would freeze a brass monkey off the porch.
-
It's so cold outside, I think I'm going to freeze a brass monkey!
-
The temperature dropped so low that it could freeze a brass monkey in minutes.
-
During the blizzard, it felt like the wind could freeze a brass monkey at any moment.
-
In this part of the country, winters can freeze a brass monkey, so we always prepare in advance.
Synonyms
245
1.0
Make part of the body numb with a cold spray before treatment
34
1.0
Very cold, like frozen water
15
1.3
Very cold, at or below freezing
7
1.0
The weather is very cold outside
1
4.1
Very cold with no warmth left
1
9.9
People say this to mean very cold in a joking, exaggerated way
1
9.9
Very cold in a way that feels unpleasant
Very cold weather
To make your bottom very cold by sitting or staying outside in cold weather
How Cold
- Offensive
1
9.9
15
1.3
- Archaic
∞
1.0
100
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
While the verb 'freeze' is transparent, the noun phrase 'brass monkey' has no literal or predictable relation to temperature and the phrase's intensifying meaning is historically obscure. A B1 learner who knows the individual words would not reliably infer 'extremely cold' because the expression is idiomatic, non-compositional, and not a cross-linguistic pattern.
Etymology
Freeze a brass monkey comes from one popular story about sailors on old ships: they stacked metal balls on a small brass stand called a 'monkey', and in very cold weather the brass would shrink so the balls slipped off. So the image of metal so cold it makes the 'monkey' fail explains why the phrase means 'very cold'.