powder monkey (pouder mung"ki)

A boy employed on ships to carry powder from the magazine to the guns. [Obsolete or colloquial.] 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 . Sir J. Hawkins , Johnson (ed. 1787), p. 195. powder-paper (pou'dèr-pā"pėr), n . A substitute for gunpowder, consisting of paper impregnated with a mixture of pota ium chlorate, nitrate, pru iate, and chromate, powdered wood charcoal, and a little starch. It is stronger than gunpowder, produces le smoke and le recoil, and is not so much affected by humidity.