Where it sits
The phrase is real and well recorded; every specific story about what the nine yards were is guesswork.
What it doesn't mean
The idiom is in print by 1907 and 'the whole six yards' by 1912 — decades before the Second World War. The linguist Geoff Nunberg said the early finds 'put the kibosh' on the war stories.
The same early dates rule it out: Nunberg noted the cement-truck story fails because such trucks hadn't been invented yet.
None of these stories has documentary support. The earliest idiomatic uses give no hint of cloth, ships or Scotland.
What it really means
The whole nine yards might hold the record for the most origin stories attached to one phrase. Nine yards of machine-gun ammunition in a fighter plane. Nine cubic yards of concrete in a cement mixer. Nine yards of tartan in a kilt. The cloth in a queen's bridal train. The sails of a three-masted ship. Each comes with total confidence, and often, as Geoff Nunberg noted, with an old naval gunnery instructor or a Scottish tailor as the supposed witness.
None of them has evidence. And the dates rule most of them out.
What the record shows. The earliest known idiomatic use is in the Mitchell Commercial, a small newspaper in Mitchell, Indiana, on 2 May 1907, promising a baseball game but not "the full nine yards". In the rural South, people were saying "the whole six yards" by 1912. As the linguist Geoff Nunberg explained on NPR, the six yards were later inflated to nine as the phrase spread. A comic story in an Indiana newspaper used the words literally in 1855, about the cloth in an absurdly large shirt, but that's a joke, not the idiom.
Why the stories fail. A phrase in print in 1907 can't come from Second World War fighter planes. Nunberg noted that the early finds also sank the cement-mixer story, since those trucks hadn't been invented yet. The kilt, sail and bridal-train stories simply have no documents behind them.
What's actually known is how little there is to know. William Safire called it "one of the great etymological mysteries of our time" in 1982. The new evidence, Nunberg said, still doesn't settle what, if anything, the yards originally were. He suggests they may never have meant anything: "the whole…" is a pattern, and any ending will do, as with the whole shebang, the whole enchilada and the whole ball of wax.
Where it comes from
- 1855
A comic story in the New Albany Daily Ledger, Indiana, uses 'the whole nine yards' literally — of the cloth in an oversized shirt (Wikipedia, citing the OED).
- 2 May 1907
The Mitchell Commercial, Mitchell, Indiana, uses 'the full nine yards' as an idiom — the earliest known (Wikipedia).
- 1912
'The whole six yards' is in use in the rural South (NPR, Geoff Nunberg).
- 1982
William Safire calls the phrase 'one of the great etymological mysteries of our time' (NPR).
- 2012
Newly digitised newspapers push the record back, and the find is reported in The New York Times (NPR; Wikipedia dates the Times story to 26 December 2012).
In real life
- They didn't just repaint the kitchen — new floor, new units, new lights, the whole nine yards.
- If you're going to host Christmas, go the whole nine yards: crackers, paper hats, the lot.
- He bought the tent, the stove, the hiking poles — the whole nine yards — and then it rained all weekend.
Questions
Q01Where does 'the whole nine yards' come from?
Nobody knows. The earliest known idiomatic use is in a small Indiana newspaper in 1907, and a 'whole six yards' version was used in the South by 1912. The early uses give no clue to what the yards were.
Q02Is it from machine-gun belts in World War II?
No. The phrase was in print decades before the war. The linguist Geoff Nunberg noted on NPR that the early finds ruled out the war stories — and the cement-mixer one, since those trucks hadn't been invented yet.
Q03Why nine yards?
Possibly no reason at all. Nunberg pointed out that once you say 'the whole…', the ending hardly matters — 'the whole shebang', 'the whole enchilada', 'the whole ball of wax'. The six-yard version was inflated to nine as it spread.
Q04Is it British or American?
American. It's usually described as a colloquial American English phrase, and its earliest records come from Indiana, with the 'six yards' version from Kentucky and South Carolina.
Sources
- Geoff Nunberg, 'The Whole Nine Yards' Of What? — NPR, 14 January 2013.
- The whole nine yards — Wikipedia.