1.cold enough to freeze the balls (nose, tail, etc.) off a brass monkey 冷得要命
这个奇怪的短语详尽的来源已不可追溯，有好几种说法。有一种说法是船上用一种被称为猴子的黄铜支架来堆放炮弹。在极度寒冷的天气，黄铜冷缩以致炮弹都掉下来了。
No one has been able to trace the full history of this bizarre phrase. Several theories have been floated over the years, most notably the idea that monkey actually refers to the brass rack (called a monkey) that would have been used to stack cannon balls on a ship. In extreme cold, the brass would contract and thus force the cannon balls out of the rack.
2 monkey house 精神病医院/监狱
看起来貌似挺无害，但应该没人愿意住。这个短语最初指动物园里猴子的住处，到了20世纪初，也用来指住人的地方。曾被用作讽刺语，暗指诸如国会这样的政治机构，也被用作俚语，指代精神病医院或是监狱。
Even though it sounds sort of harmless, no one should want to end up in the monkey house. While the term initially referred to the building in a zoo that houses the monkeys, by the early 20th century it was referring to buildings housing humans as well. Although monkey house has been used as a satirical term for political institutions, such as Parliament, the term has also been used as slang for psychiatric hospitals and prisons.
3 monkey business 恶作剧
一般来说，这个短语用来指鬼混或者恶作剧，也可以指政治贿赂这样的不法行为。其中monkey是动词，意为“胡闹”或是“做手脚”。
Broadly speaking, monkey business refers to fooling around or any sort of mischievous behavior, ranging from bribery in politics to kissing. Related to monkey business is the verb monkey, which means to “behave in a silly or playful way” or “to tamper with.”
4 monkey wrench 活动扳手/破坏性因素
对于为何要把这种活动扳手称为猴子扳手，说法并不统一。Monkey wrench这个表达形式曾在美国作家、散文家爱德华·艾比1975年出版的小说《故意破坏帮/扳手党》中出现过。讲一帮绰号为'The Monkey Wrench Gang'的环保激进人士部署了一系列破坏行动以表达他们的政治立场，后来人们就用动词monkeywrench来表示“搞破坏，以示抗议”。
The exact reasons why this adjustable wrench ended up being called a monkey wrench are still disputed. One person who played off of this phrase is Edward Abbey, an American author and essayist, whose 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang follows a group of radical environmentalists as they protest land development in the American West. Going by the moniker “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” this group deploys sabotages as a method of taking a political stand, and ultimately gives us the verb to monkeywrench, which means to “sabotage (something), especially as a form of protest.”
5 monkey see, monkey do 有样学样
这个短语用来指机械式的模仿行为，模仿者就是简单粗暴地有样学样，没有真正理解其中的原由或是过程。
This phrase refers to an example of basic imitation, in which the imitator learns by copying and does not actually understand the reason or process.
6 more fun than a barrel of monkeys 玩得非常开心
听起来有点恐怖——让人想到了《勇敢者的游戏》里面的那个场景——不过从19世纪初开始，这个短语就被用来表示有趣的活动。不管前面的容器是一笼、一箱、一袋、一桶还是一大车，只要带有monkeys的都表示非常欢乐。据《牛津英语词典》记载，这个表达和'barrel of laughs(开心果)'有关。
While this sounds more like a nightmare – I’m thinking of that scene in the movie Jumanji – people have been referring to enjoyable activities as “more fun than a [insert container of choice] of monkeys” since at least the early 19th century. Whether a cage, box, bag, barrel, or wagonload, monkeys (contained monkeys, anyway) have been the purveyors of joy for quite some time. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes the relationship to the phrase barrel of laughs.
7 Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle! 我很惊讶！
这个习语表示惊讶，难以置信，它的形成可以追溯到1925年田纳西州的一个案子，一名老师由于在课堂上公开讲授达尔文的“进化论”而被控告。在20世纪前半期越来越多公众开始接受达尔文的这套理论，这个表达被认为是对“进化论”的讽刺回应。
Used to express surprise or disbelief — especially to intensify a previous statement, this phrase dates to 1925, the year of the Scopes Monkey trial, a landmark court case in Tennessee over the legality of teaching evolution in a state-funded school. The phrase is usually regarded as a sarcastic response to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which was beginning to see wider public acceptance in the first part of the 20th century.
8 monkey's wedding 太阳雨
这是南非地区的一个常用表达，指太阳和降雨同时出现的情况（晴雨天、太阳雨）。在其它语言中，也有一些类似的词汇会涉及到动物的婚姻。
This lovely South African phrase refers to the weather phenomenon of simultaneous rain and sunshine. Several other languages have similar terms also involving animal marriage.
9 a monkey on one's back 染上毒瘾
这个短语一开始专门用来暗指吸毒问题——这里的monkey指毒瘾或是戒毒过程中产生的病症——后来用以指让人难以摆脱的负担。
Although this phrase started off specifically as an allusion to a drug problem – monkey referring to the addiction or the symptoms of withdrawal — it eventually came to refer to any problem or issue that was a burden to someone.
