monkey jacket

English

monkey jacket (plural monkey jackets)

(dated) A type of close-fitting jacket worn by sailors.
- 1820, Francis Forbes, The Banks of Newfoundland:
  You bully boys of Liverpool, I'll have you to beware,
  When you sail on them packet ships, no dungaree jumpers wear;
  But have a big monkey jacket all ready to your hand,
  For there blows some cold nor'westers on the Banks of Newfoundland.
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
  We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers.
- 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 25:
  We did not even possess "two coats apiece" - our ordinary costume being waterproof monkey jackets, sailor hats with puggarees twined round them, and some simple white muslin or fresh cotton dresses.
A semiformal lightweight jacket, usually made of nylon, with striped cuffs and neck, similar to an MA-1 flight jacket.
(US, medicine, slang) A hospital gown.