I suspect it might be from India where women used to wear a sari which was nine yards long - quite long, indeed! The use of the nine-yard sari was widespread during the Raj, but it is now a dying breed. The sari that is seen commonly these days is five yards long. One has to go to remote villages in certain parts of the country to find elderly women wearing nine-yard long saris. M Desai, Sutton, Surrey. When I visited a coal mining museum a few years ago, we were advised that the amount each miner was allocated to work on each day long before mechanisation was nine yards.
So, if they achieved their daily goal and got it all out, they had had done the "whole nine yards". That makes sense to me. David Smith, Coventry, England. I can't find any evidence for this, but somebody once told me that "the whole nine yards" refers to the length of a standard roll of carpet.
Richard Taylor, Didcot, UK. So if you were shooting, say, a test shot, you might as well shoot nine yards of film, rather than anything shorter. Therefore, an able bodied seaman could "go the full nine yards".
I worked on the weapons systems of fighter jets. When a pilot returned with all of his ammo expended he would say, "I gave them the whole nine yards. I have no idea if this was the origin of the phrase, but it appears to have been used in the military in the 's. One more to the list. It is perhaps significant that there are so many, albeit hearsay, reports of this possible source. This is not a question but more of a comment on an incorrect staement made of the 'whole nine yards', which comes from a staff sergeant telling a corporal he can have the 'whole nine yards' when on a.
Why is it that people who make this stuff up are unable to spell? The more certainty, the worse spelling. There's a research project in that for someone. That should be pretty easy to check - just watch the movie. It's a pity he didn't think of that. Hi folks, love the site. But I was amazed that no-one has picked up on what I consider the true meaning of the phrase "the whole nine yards. Though I'm sure everyone says that! The problem is that you're all looking at the word Yard and thinking distance or measurement.
This however dates back instead to tall ships and the large horizontal beams that hung from the masts to support the sails. Each of these horizontal beams is called a yard -as in the other popular phrase amongst sailors where you're not allowed a drink "till the sun's over the yard-arm. When tall ships were battling and engaging cannon fire, some had cannons mounted in the hull at the forward end, or bow. But this was less common as the boat was more likely to take on water when you were out on the high seas.
So the majority of canons were positioned within the hull on the sides of the vessels -known by some as the broadsides. So though you may have approached your enemy from ahead or from behind, to fully engage in combat you had to go broadside-on, or side to side. As two ships approached one another, they would jockey for position, and keep their bailing out options open. On a fully rigged tall ship this would have meant delicately balancing the power of the sails across possibly three masts, each with three square sails -and each being held up on a yard arm.
This is where the nine yards cames from -nine yard arms. As you approached your enemy, you could gradually turn each sail the wrong way called "backing the sail" by pivoting the relevant yard to the wrong side of the boat using the braces and sheets control lines or ropes.
This makes the boat want to turn broadside-on, but the boat would still make slow headway until the point where you fully committed by throwing the last brace, backing this last sail and turning to face your foe all canons blazing.
There's my tuppence worth. I'm off to root in some admiralty archives to get some relevant facts to support this widely known theory. Thanks for the great site, JW. PS - still waiting for those Admiralty records. In reference to the phrase "The whole nine yards".. I can't offer anything to add to what you have discovered, but for some reason I think it more probable that the origin was football..
With a first down being 10 yards you might think that that phrase would make more sense, however I beleive a situation of a hard fought 1 yard, followed by an amazing 9 yard gain needed to make the first down could easily be a more common situation, and in games, a memorable situation leading to a phrase like that which would probably be repeated several times after a game..
I believe this is the origin of 'the whole nine yards. Back when homes were heated by coal burning boilers, coal trucks would deliver to each home. These trucks were divided into three compartments of three cubic yards each. Homeowners could order three yards of coal, six yards, or the "whole nine yards. The whole nine yards came from the machine gunner in a rifle platoon.
Every nine yards is a tracer round and thats the direction everyone is supposed to shoot. Find this In traditional India, the is the garment of choice for the women. The privileged women wore the 9 yard saris while the regular sais are 6 yeards long. I believe that the term "the whole nine yards"is a baseball term, meaning when a team is out of contention everyone on the forty man roster gets to play, it has always been said that the team is playing out the string, meaning letting it all go. It was first referred to the amount of material required to make a large man's kilt or a man's regimental kilt.
A regimental kilt is one where the pleats are lined up so that each pleat displays the prominent stripe. This is opposed to the regular pleated kilt, where the tartan pattern is matched so that the pattern is uninterrupted through the pleats, like matching a wallpaper pattern.
A running-pleat formal kilt for a large man requires 8 yards of fabric whereas a regimental kilt will require deeper pleats, and thus 9 yards of fabric. During the war, the doughboys would fly their planes on a "strafing run". This involved flying directly towards enemy ground targets and using their machine gun to eliminate the target. The bullets were attached to belts which were fed into the gun. The belts were nine yards long. Hence, " I gave them the whole nine yards.
Interestingly matter of fact assertions. They would almost have the air of being true - if they weren't made up. The proper amount of material used to make a "great kilt", which pre-dates the modern dress kilts of today, is made from nine yards of material. Modern kilts use less material, ranging from five to seven yards. The traditional great kilt is made only by using "The Whole Nine Yards". I remember using this term in in Air Force Surviver Training.
Not sure what the standard Airborne parachute line length line was then, but we would cut it up and make rope 3 twisted lines for use going off cliffs. So the term was to make sure you used the whole nine yards. Which my understanding then was that if you parachute jumped you hoped the whole nine yards open, then you would go down with "the whole nine yards'.
Since this was standard in the '60s find no reference to parachute lines on any of the uses of this term, why? Why indeed. Perhaps because no one else believes that story.
It is nice to get a new theory every now and again though. Regarding the origin of "the whole nine yards"; it comes from the future. In the year a genetically engineered plant made from a combination of bamboo and corn was to make a house that, in an emergency, you could eat.
The first family to own one of these houses was a family whose last name was actually "Yod", and yes, there were nine of them. Speculative science. This sceptred isle. Root of all evil. Ethical conundrums. This sporting life. Stage and screen.
Birds and the bees. At least one caliber was issued in 27 foot lengths. I was also told that it came from WW2 fighter pilots in the Pacific, when arming their planes on the ground, the Perhaps American football, then? It requires travelling 9 yards to complete a first down, therefore any significant effort resulting in success would be considered going the whole nine yards. I always figured it was referring to the last set of downs before the endzone, which will be always less than ten but at most 9.
The length of the Saree worn by the Indian women is normally 6 yards. However, the traditional Sarees are 9 yards in length and take more time to dress up! The first time I heard this phrase in the s it was attributed, almost certainly falsely, to the football coach Vince Lombardi whose team was at nine and goal, but was stopped on the one yard line and lost.
It came from WW1.
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