'Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey'... is that a nautical term or a naughty girl's term?

Many familiar words and expressions have nautical origins. We may say "An economic upturn is in the offing" without bothering to find out what exactly is "the offing". Or someone may be referred to as "the son of a gun". Yup, that too has seafaring lineage, and it's actually a complimentary term.

And how about "flogging a dead horse"? During my recent holiday cruise, an article in the ship's daily newsletter stood out for me:

 

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Here's a news feature headline that used the word "offing":

This is how the Grammarist website explains the idiom:

The idiom in the offing means likely to happen soon. It comes from a scarcely used sense of offing, a noun defined as the distant but visible area of the sea beyond the anchoring ground. So something in the offing is within sight but distant.

http://grammarist.com/usage/in-the-offing/

What about "the horizon"? Most definitions will say it is the apparent line that separates the land or the sea from the sky. So, it is simply "the horizon" and you cannot qualify it, as someone quoted below tried to do:

If you are by now hooked on nautical idioms/terms, here's a couple more websites:

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/nautical-phrases.html

http://www.prismnet.com/gibbonsb/words.words.words.html

Don't forget to check out what these sites have to say about the idiom "to freeze the balls off a brass monkey"!

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3.1.13

Liane reminded me this morning that today (Jan 3, 2013) is a palindromic date!