monkey wrench?

[rusty]

American Machinist, 1880 Mar,Vol3 Pg9 gives this somewhat diferent explanation: (slightly garbled OCR)

"Would yon be Bo kind as to give me the/lerivation of the term "monkey" as applied to a wrench?

A.—The term monkey was first applied to a weight used as a hammer, as in the pile-driver, and is known by that name at the present time. When the weight is used, as in a drop hammer, to form or indent metals, it is also known as a " monkey hammer." The term " monkey" is also applied to a pump, which is the sailor's name for the sucking straw introduced at a gimlet hole in a wine cask. It is as old as Xenophon, who describes this mode of pilfering from the wine jars of Armenia. This style qf pump will probably remain in use much longer without improvement. The term "monkey" as applied to a wrench signifies hammer, as a monkey wrench is part hammer and part wrench, forming a very useful combination. "


As is typical, no references are cited :(
At least it doesn't require mangling some poor fellows name ;P

[amertrac]

I have heard two stories
one is that when they were first made you had to twist the handle to open and close the jaw
thus twisting the monkeys tail to make him work
two a french inventor by the name of monqui  first produce it

[mvwcnews]

My theory (based on the earliest I could find the term "monkey wrench" in print was late 1830's Britain) -- "monkey" as an adjective denoting small & agile was applied to all kinds of things in the early 19th Century.  Powder monkeys were the boys who brought gunpowder up to the deck, etc.   This was the time when Britain was expanding empire in those regions of the world where monkeys were endemic -- especially India.

 That first "monkey wrench" I found in print was a 6-inch  "twist handle to adjust the size" in a toolmaker's  pattern book. 

The true origin is lost in unrecorded oral history, nearly 200 years ago or more.  Makes it fun to speculate.

[fflintstone]

  Makes it fun to speculate.

my guess is speculation is all we have.

have heard the term grease monkey for the people who lubricated factory jack shafts as well.

[Plyerman]

Those old machine shops had a lot of jack shafts, with a lot of bearings that needed greasing. And just look at all those flat belts. Makes a guy wonder just how many one armed ex-grease monkeys there were walking around back then?

[Bus]

.
 That first "monkey wrench" I found in print was a 6-inch  "twist handle to adjust the size" in a toolmaker's  pattern book.

Stan what was the date on the pattern book?  Of all the explanations on the origin of "monkey wrench" the monkey as a nickname for boys e.g. grease monkeys sounds the most plausible to me but like you said we will probably never know for certain.

[Branson]

Of all the explanations on the origin of "monkey wrench" the monkey as a nickname for boys e.g. grease monkeys sounds the most plausible to me but like you said we will probably never know for certain.

Something I just thought of...  It looks like the earliest uses of "monkey wrench" come from England.  The technical name for these in the 1850s was "screw wrench" in the US.  Was "monkey wrench" an imported name?  If so, when did it arrive here?  A 1908 American English dictionary does not include monkey wrench, but a 1922 American English dictionary does, and includes as an illustration a Coe's.

A consistent meaning of monkey is mischief, fooling around.  Throwing a monkey wrench in the works started out in England as "a spanner in the works" (which some of us will remember in the title of John Lennon's "A Spaniard in the Works").

If enough linguists become interested in monkey wrenches, we might get answers, or at least be able to find the dates of the earlier appearances of monkey wrench in published sources.

It might be as simple as having a wrench that both turns nuts and bolts, and hammers.  You can get in a good deal of mischief with a tool like this.

[Nolatoolguy]

I always wondered the same. The stories are all intresting, who really knows witch is correct.

[rusty]

>but a 1922 American English dictionary does,

Appletons 1918 Spanish-English dictionary provides a translation, so by then at least , it was common enough in usage to be worth a translation....

(llave inglesa) Which seems to now translate back into adjustable wrench...

[Branson]

(llave inglesa) Which seems to now translate back into adjustable wrench...

Scratching my head to figure out how llave inglesa (English key) translates to monkey wrench, though llave can mean a try square.