A flexible roundabout garment.
1830. My wardrobe consisted of a ‘monkey’ jacket, bought in Gravesend, and which had now finished its third passage across the Atlantic, an event almost unparalelled in the annals of Gravesend jackets.—N. Ames, ‘A Mariner’s Sketches,’ p. 187.
1840. We always took our monkey-jackets with us.—R. H. Dana, Jr., ‘Two Years before the Mast,’ chap. xxiii. p. 241. (N.E.D.)
1850. He wore a red shirt, and a roundabout, sometimes called a monkey-jacket.—S. Judd, ‘Richard Edney,’ p. 18.
1850. Richard was a parvenu; he was fresh from the country,—this everybody saw; the way he stared at things showed it, even if his red shirt, and snuff-colored monkey-jacket, and striped mittens, did not.—Id., p. 117.
