More Fun Than a Barrel of Monkeys
Published: 2021-10-25“More fun than a barrel of monkeys” means “very fun, or very clever”.
At first, I looked up the meaning of “barrel of monkeys” and found out that this is the name of a toy game that was released in 1965. In this game, you pick up as many monkeys as you can, by hooking one monkey’s arm through another monkey’s arm, creating a chain (without using your hands directly).
Anyway, since this has been sold as a set of a barrel and some monkeys, I thought, “Okay, so this game is where the phrase comes from. Nothing so interesting.” But looking carefully at the dictionary, I realized that it was the other way around. This phrase IS the origin of the game. According to Wikipedia,
Becker[, the company’s vice president at the time,] said it was during the meeting that he brought up the phrase, “more fun than a barrel of monkeys.”
Indeed, this expression was in use as of 1895.
Barrel of monkeys, or bushel of monkeys, to have more fun than, to have an exceedingly jolly time.1
The first usage of one variation of this phrase found in the OED is as follows, and it seems to be used with an image of an actual cage of monkeys. People in the past must have thought of the playful or clever behaviors of these monkeys.
De Traci chatters More than a cage of monkeys: we must wait.1
The “barrel” part can be replaced by many other words such as “wagonload”, “barrowload”, “cartload”, and so on.
There are also figurative phrases such as “barrel of laughs” and “barrel of fun” meaning “a great deal of enjoyment”. This may be why the word “barrel” best fits the meaning of fun.