monkey banana skins

Forums: English, Esl, Grammar
Email this Topic • Print this Page

What do monkey and banana skins imply in English?

Topic Stats
Top Replies
Link to this Topic

Type: Question • Score: 4 • Views: 1,009 • Replies: 5

No top replies

@weiwei,

What is the context of these terms? Banana skins in certain contexts hold a meaning that's associated with slapstick comedy. Old TV and movie comedies (particularly silent films) have skits or scenes where a character unintentionally steps onto a banana peel and slips and falls.

0 Replies

@weiwei,

When someone uses the term 'monkey around', it implies they act clownish and/or in a silly or mischievous manner...like a monkey.

Banana skins... used in many comic scenes are often put in someone's path to make them slip and fall (a common scene in a TV or movie) to bring a pompous person down to make them look a bit foolish and evoke laughter.

So banana skins would indicate some device that's used to make someone or something lose its footing, trip up or malfunction.

0 Replies

Monkeyshines. ?

A great English word pronounced by my father at the bottom of the stairs many nights:
"Stop all the monkeyshines up there or I'll come up there!!"

Joe(we would get quiet for a moment or two)Nation

0 Replies

Lyrics -

The Dead Milkmen wrote:

Burrow owl, burrow owl, burrow owl

Smokin' banana peels, see how it feels
Living is easy with ice cubes
The world is swimmin' with electric eels
Talk seriously to me brother

Smokin' banana peels, savin' the seals
There are four me's living all together
Got to keep an even keel
You've got to take life serially

Smokin' banana peels in between meals
I was all pumped up about the iron
Let's all pray get down and kneel

Smokin' banana peels sound like this

Mellow, it's so mellow
Mellow, it's so mellow
No! It's too mellow! Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya
No! It's too mellow! Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya

Mellow, it's so mellow oh, oh, oh-oh, oh
Mellow, it's so mellow
No! It's too mellow! Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya
No! It's so mellow! Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya

Smokin' banana peels, nothin' is real
Mites are living in your eyelashes
People are makin' important deals
They're my fingernails and I'm keeping 'em
Smokin' banana peels, savin' the seals

0 Replies

Do you remember that there was this big rumor in the late 60's that Donovan's Mellow Yellow was about smoking the charred insides of banana peels.

So silly.

We wasted a whole afternoon and about three dozen bananas trying to get them to turn the right color brown over the gas flame and then, after many tries, gave up trying to roll them into flammable cigarettes.

Joe(quite rightly)Nation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCCjv2OiTxE

0 Replies

monkey banana skins

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know