brass monkeys
"brass-monkeys" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“brass monkeys” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Very cold.
Corpus desk
Index EN-brass-monkeys · brass monkeys · English
brass monkeys · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "B" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | brass monkeys |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “brass monkeys” in English
Rare enough to double-check
brass monkeys is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Very cold.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for brass monkeys in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From the phrase cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey - supposedly a reference to the brass container for cannon balls on a British man-of-war (but this seems to have been discredited). The correct English form is brass monkeys, spelled B-R-A-S-S- -M-O-N-K-E-Y-S.
Definition
- 1Very cold.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how brass monkeys appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Blimey, it's brass monkeys out there today.
Etymology
From the phrase cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey - supposedly a reference to the brass container for cannon balls on a British man-of-war (but this seems to have been discredited).
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.