OneGuyFromBarlick

My father in law used to say if someone was being nosey "you've got a nose like Sam Herb"--- who the heck was Sam Herb??

I remember my grandmother telling us that she had heard this somewhat strange saying. Someone looking into the open door of poor people houses to see what they had or hadn't. A woman came out and said "would you like to come in and look at our grand piano".

It's only a guess Glo but I wonder if this has a Jewish connotation? The hooked nose was always seen as a Jewish racial characteristic and this could be a reference to Sir Herbert Samuel. (LINK) The meaning being that you were poking your nose in, interfering, in something that wasn't any of your business.

Australian's call it sticky beaking? Just started a book I read sometime ago The Road to Nab End by William Woodruff, based on him growing up in Blackburn it's full of strange sayings. He refers to people shouting if you were in the petty "what you doing in there making your will". Eileen

Stanley, I think you may have hit on it there.
Eileen, I remember that "are you making your will?". I once started the Road to Nab End but couldn't get into it, may try again.

Yes, I think that's correct Stanley. "Don't be nosey".

And all this time you thought it was just a vulgar expression (unless you're an ex matelot that is )

It was necessary to keep a good supply of cannon balls near the cannon on old war ships. But how to prevent them from rolling about the deck was the problem. The storage method devised was to stack them as a square based pyramid, with one ball on top, resting on four, resting on nine, which rested on sixteen.

Thus, a supply of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon. There was only one problem -- how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding/rolling from under the others.

The solution was a metal plate with 16 round indentations, called, for reasons unknown, a Monkey. But if this plate were made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make them of brass - hence, Brass Monkeys.

Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much faster than iron when chilled.

Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannon balls would come right off the monkey.

Another case for Occam's razor........

With thanks to Wikipedia

It is often stated that the phrase originated from the use of a brass tray, called a "monkey", to hold cannonballs on warships in the 16th to 18th centuries. Supposedly, in very cold temperatures the "monkey" would contract, causing the balls to fall off.[14] However, nearly all historians and etymologists consider this story to be an urban legend. This story has been discredited by the U.S. Department of the Navy,[15] etymologist Michael Quinion, and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).[16]

I thought the saying related to the fact that brass does not contract that much with cold , so it has to be very cold for the brass to contract ( anyone got the thermal co-efficients to hand ?) )

I think you've got it back to front there Whyps - the original "theory" was that the brass shrank more than the iron. The coefficients of expansion are 11.8 x10 to the minus 6 per degree centigrade for iron, and for brass the figure is 18 etc, Thus the brass will contract more, but with the help of vaguely remembered schoolboy physics, and the back of an envelope, I make the relative difference in contraction, for a 6" cannon ball, and a fall in temperature of 30 degrees celsius, to be 1.3 thousandths of an inch. I suggest this is not enough to have the effect stated. Additionally it seems the phrase was not in use until well after cannon balls had stopped being used, so it falls on etymological grounds too.

Thanks , I knew my source was wrong , but didnt have the proof to contradict them.