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The whole 9 yards!
alledan
Member Posts: 19,541
Did You Know?
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from W.W.II fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from W.W.II fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards
Comments
Eric S. Williams
Rugster
If you're hoping for a definitive answer, you'd better buy a crystal ball. I have to say straight away this is one of the great unsolved mysteries of modern etymology, for which many seek the truth and almost as many find explanations, but hardly anyone has a clue. What we do know is that the phrase is recorded from the 1960s, is an Americanism (it's nothing like so well known in Britain, for example), and has the meaning of "everything; all of it; the whole lot; the works". But there are no leads anyone can discover to a reasonable idea of where it came from.
What is most remarkable about the phrase is the number of attempts that have been made to explain it. This may be because it's an odd expression. But perhaps our need to make sense of this saying in particular is because it came into existence only during the lifetime of many people still with us, and so lacks the patina of age that turns phrases into naturalised idioms that we accept without question.
While looking into it, I've seen references to the size of a nun's habit, the amount of material needed to make a man's three-piece suit, the length of a maharajah's ceremonial sash, the capacity of a West Virginia ore wagon, the volume of rubbish that would fill a standard garbage truck, the length of a hangman's noose, how far you would have to sprint during a jail break to get from the cellblock to the outer wall, the length of a standard bolt of cloth, the volume of a rich man's grave, or just possibly the length of his shroud, the size of a soldier's pack, the length of cloth needed for a Scottish "great kilt", or some distance associated with sports or athletics, especially the game of American football.
None of these has anything going for it except the unsung inventiveness of compulsive explainers. For example, a man's suit requires about five square yards of material; anyone who thinks a soldier's pack could measure nine cubic yards is dimensionally challenged; and I'm told it takes ten yards to earn a first down in American football, not nine.
One particularly bizarre story that turns up more frequently than any other is that it represents the capacity of a ready-mixed concrete truck, so that the whole nine yards might be a reference to a complete load. It does seem rather unlikely that a term from such a specialist field would become so well known throughout North America, but one or two writers are convinced this is the true origin. However, the capacity of today's trucks vary a great deal, and few of them can actually carry nine cubic yards of concrete. Matthew Jetmore, a contributor to the alt.folklore.urban newsgroup, unearthed evidence from the August 1964 issue of the Ready Mixed Concrete Magazine that this could not have been the origin: "Whereas, just a few years ago, the 4.5 cubic yard mixer was definitely the standard of the industry, the average nationwide mixer size by 1962 had increased to 6.24 cubic yards, with still no end in sight to the demand for increased payload". That makes it clear that at the time the expression was presumably coined the usual size was only about half the nine (cubic) yards of the saying.
Another relates to the idea of yards being the long spars on a ship rather than units of measurement. The argument is that a three-masted ship had three yards on each mast for the square sails, making nine in all. So that a ship with all sail set would be using the whole nine yards. The biggest problem here is dating - by the time the expression came into use, sailing ships were long gone; even if the phrase were fifty years older than its first certified appearance (unlikely, but not impossible), it would still be right at the very end of the sailing-ship era, and long after its heyday. Other problems are that big square-rigged sailing ships commonly had more than nine yards and that the expression ought in that case to be all nine yards rather than the whole nine yards (the same objection could be made about other suggestions that involve numbers rather than areas or volumes). Another attempt at relating the expression to sailing ships has it that nine yards is somehow related to the area of canvas, but a full-rigged ship had vastly more than nine square yards of sail.
Yet another explanation is that it was invented by fighter pilots in the Pacific during World War Two. It is said the .50 calibre machine gun ammunition belts in Supermarine Spitfires measured exactly 27 feet. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, they would say that it got "the whole nine yards". A merit of this claim is that it would explain why the phrase only began to be recorded after the War.
Some writers argue that the number isn't a dimension of any kind: Jonathon Green, in his Cassell Dictionary of Slang, suggests that it's most likely to represent a use of nine as a mystic number, after the fashion of nine tailors, the nine muses, and several other expressions; Jesse Sheidlower thinks that it may be related in this way to the number in the equally odd expression dressed to the nines.
What do I believe? I believe that, failing the discovery of the lexicographical equivalent of the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, we are unlikely to find out the truth about this one.
Remember...Terrorist are attacking Civilians; Not the Government. Protect Yourself!
NRA Lifetime Benefactor Member.
..on a good day,she can mow the whole 9 yards.
.218
told me this one:
A guy go`s to the uroligist.
What seams to be the problem?
Well..my * is orange.
What do you do for a living?
I`m a lanscaper.
What to you do at home?
I usually just sit around the house,
eatin` cheato`s and whatchin` porn.
.218
Did sombody say somethin` about bees?
I know..."angry"..."hungry".....gimmee that other'n.
Bob
Edited by - gunboob on 07/17/2002 10:13:47
Edited by - gunboob on 07/17/2002 11:15:33
http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/taylor/topics/grypuzzle.htm
Remember...Terrorist are attacking Civilians; Not the Government. Protect Yourself!
NRA Lifetime Benefactor Member.
This phrase is of unknown origin and is the subject of some debate. At issue is to what does nine yards refer. The meaning is clearly the entirety or everything, but nine yards is not a significant measure of anything. All we know about its origin is that the phrase cannot be traced any earlier than the mid-1960s and that it is American in origin.
Perhaps the most common explanation is American football, but the canonical distance in that game is ten, not nine, yards. Also common are explanations based on length of cloth, but there is no standard length for a bolt of cloth (which measure anywhere from twenty to twenty-five yards), and nine yards is not a significant measure for any type of garment (a man's suit uses about seven yards of a thirty-inch bolt, double folded; sarongs, saris, kilts, kimonos, bridal veils and any number of other garments have been suggested, none with any accompanying evidence).
The explanation that is currently circulating around the internet most frequently is that nine yards was the length of a belt of machine gun ammunition carried by a WWII fighter plane. To "give it the whole nine yards" was to expend all of one's ammo. This explanation is almost certainly false. For one thing, the type of fighter varies with the teller, sometimes Spitfire's in the Battle of Britain, sometimes varying American fighters in the South Pacific. Another reason to doubt it is that ammunition is either counted in rounds or by weight. It is never measured in length of a belt. Chapman points to an origin in the Army and Air Force, which fits in with the post-WWII-era origin, but is otherwise unexplained.
James Kirkpatrick favors the explanation that it is a reference to the capacity of ready-mix concrete trucks (Fine Print: Reflections on the Writing Art). Safire also plumps for this explanation. This explanation, however, is somewhat questionable as the August 1964 issue of Ready Mixed Concrete magazine gives an average concrete mixer as having a capacity of four and a half cubic yards "just a few years ago" and an average of under six and a half in 1962. A 1988 source (Cecil Adams in More of the Straight Dope ), states current mixers range from seven to ten cubic yards, with a rough average of nine. While current averages may be on target, when the phrase arose, the average cement payload was less than four and a half cubic yards. So the cement truck explanation is probably incorrect.
Chapman also suggests that it may be related to the British phrase dressed to the nines, where presumably nine has some numerological significance. He also suggests that yard may refer to the slang usage of that word to mean one hundred dollars.
Other explanations include:
The amount of dirt in a large burial plot;
The number of properties, or yards, in a standard city block in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Levittown, (pick your city);
The amount of cloth used in a burial shroud;
The capacity of coal trucks; and
The number of yards on a square rigged sailing ship (yards being the horizontal poles that hold the sails), even though it was not uncommon for such ships to have eighteen yards.
One final possibility is that it does derive from American football, but was originally intended to be ironic. To go "the whole nine yards" was to fall just short of the goal.
In summary, this is just one of those idiomatic phrases that defy explanation. This may not be satisfying, but it is not uncommon in English.
AlleninAlaska
Free men are not equal and equal men are not free
Oh well, this was a good eye-opener today.
Bob