I love researching the origins of expressions, myths and traditions although the research often turns up more questions than answers.
Take the idiom "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey."
At face value, it would indeed have to be very frigid to freeze any anatomical appendage off a statue made of metal.
But the origins of this expression are not, perhaps, what face value might suggest. Etymologists most frequently cite the idiom as nautical in origin.
Supposedly, way back when pirates sailed the seven seas, mariners would store their cannonballs in pyramids atop brass trays known as "monkeys." In theory, since brass contracts more than iron with lowering temperatures, extreme cold would cause the cannon balls to roll off the monkeys.
There are some questionable aspects to the veracity of this situation.
Scientifically, while the thermal coefficients of brass and iron are different, it seems unlikely the brass could contract enough to dislodge the cannonballs.
Practically, storing cannonballs in this fashion, while perhaps efficient, seems a bit problematic as the pitching of a ship in high waves seems more likely to knock the balls off than freezing temperatures.
Some skeptics even claim there is no evidence this arrangement of cannonballs was called a brass monkey.
Nevertheless, just because something is non-scientific, impractical and/or exaggerated doesn't mean people don't say it and/or (more disturbingly) believe it.
For example, Groundhog Day was Feb. 2. It is said that on this date, if a groundhog emerges from its burrow and sees its shadow, we are in for six more weeks of winter. If it does not see its shadow, spring will arrive early.
This old wive's tale, and specifically the date, comes to us from the Pennsylvania Dutch, but the concept of weather prognosticating animals goes back much further.
One can forgive our ancestors for their superstitions as their very survival depended on the coming of spring when the winter stores of food were waning.
These days, the tradition goes on, but most people just see it as a little bit of harmless fun (at least I hope that's the case). It doesn't take a genius to see all the flaws in the concept of a furry soothsayer, not the least of which is that spring arriving early is highly subjective.
It is also subject to latitudinal variations.
In Pennsylvania (and also southern B.C., coincidentally), groundhogs start coming out of hibernation around the beginning of February, but in Ontario, the rodents don't start emerging from their burrows until mid-March. Keep going north and the deep sleep can even last into April.
There have been attempts to explain the phenomenon scientifically. We know that sunshine, which facilitates the seeing of shadows, is associated with cold in the winter. Therefore, cold at the beginning of February might mean more winter ahead.
But explaining it scientifically depends on a degree of accuracy in the rodent-turned-meteorologist equation. The most famous of all the groundhog forecasters is Punxsutawney Phil a pseudo-mythical critter who has been foretelling the prolonging of winter or early coming of spring since 1887.
That is a good long sample size to accurately assess accuracy and Phil does not do well in that regard. Depending on the aforementioned subjectivity of what constitutes an early spring, experts give Phil an accuracy rating of between 20 and 40 per cent.
That's not even as good as what might be expected from flipping a coin.
