subs. phr. (formerly naval).—A boy employed to carry gunpowder from magazine to gun. Fr. moussaillon.—B. E. (c. 1696); GROSE (1785).

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  1682.  A. RADCLIFFE, The Rambler, 68. ‘A Call to the Guard by a Drum.’

        To be next him the other takes care not to fail,
POWDER MONKEY by name that vents stink by whole sale.

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  d. 1704.  T. BROWN, Works (1760), ii. 212. Lucifer … would not … have listed them into his Service; they would not have been fit for so much as POWDER-MONKEYS.

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  1787.  SIR J. HAWKINS, Th Life of Samuel Johnson, 195. One poet feigns that the town is a sea, the playhouse a ship, the manager the captain, the players sailors, and the orange-girls POWDER-MONKIES.

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  1815.  SCOTT, Guy Mannering, lii. Ellangowan had him placed as cabin-boy or POWDER-MONKEY on board an armed sloop.

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  1870.  Chambers’ Miscellany, No. 77, 4. The boy is employed in handing the cartridges, for which he is honoured with the name of POWDER-MONKEY.

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