when and where did the saying "The whole nine Yards " come from?

Answer 1

This has long been one of the great unsolved mysteries of modern etymology. What we have known for some years 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”.

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.

Few of these have 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 varies 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 can 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 during World War Two. It is said the .50 calibre machine gun ammunition belts in an aircraft of the period 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.

All the early references are linked to the Vietnam War and this has led a few researchers to suggest an association with the Montagnards, the hill tribes of Vietnam who joined the war on the US side and who suffered grievously as a result. It is sometimes said that there were nine tribes, and that the US Army commonly abbreviated their name to Yards. So: the whole nine Yards. The problem with this is that there are actually more than nine groups of Montagnards and there’s no clear evidence the phrase was ever used in this way.

After many years of puzzlement and false leads, we seem to be approaching the answer, which may by an odd twist combine several of these stories by connecting aircraft, Scotsmen and the kilt, and Vietnam.

Barry Popik, a New York researcher, found that an early user of the phrase was the US Navy pilot Captain Richard Stratton, who became one of the best known prisoners of war in North Vietnam during the conflict. Captain Stratton has clear memories of having heard it at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, in July 1955, in reference to a risqué story (which you will find on Barry Popik’s site) about the fictional Andrew MacTavish and his courtship with Mary Margaret MacDuff.

We must be cautious, since this is anecdotal evidence, and memory can be very fallible, especially that far back. But, if true, the origin lies in a mildly dirty joke, which I can’t help finding incongruous in view of all the earnest attempts that have been made at explaining it.

&

no one is 100% sure of the origin, although many have a fervent belief that they do. These convictions are unfailingly based on no more evidence than 'someone told me'. Having said that, I have put a considerable amount of time into researching this and we are probably as close to the origin as we can get, short of absolute proof. What I am sure of, 99% at least - is that the phrase wasn't in wide use before 1961 - which tends to rule out many of the suggested sources.

"The whole nine yards" crops up in many contexts, which isn't surprising, as there are many things that can be measured in yards. This is the reason there are so many plausible explanations of the phrase's origin; regrettably, plausibility isn't enough, as we'll show.

The earliest known example of the phrase in print is in 'The Agitator, 29th Mar 1855'. This newspaper, based in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, claimed to be 'Devoted to the Extension of the Area of Freedom and the Spread of Healthy Reform'. Despite that, rather than news, it contains made-up stories of the 'WWII bomber found on the moon' sort we see in our contemporary gutter press. The story from 1855 concerns a judge who arrived at an event without a spare shirt and decided to have one made for him. As a joke a friend ordered one with three times the required material, i.e. 'nine yards of bleached domestic and three yards of linen'. The outcome was:

"He found himself shrouded in a shirt five yards long and four yards broad. What a silly, stupid woman! I told her to get enough to make three shirts; instead of making three, she has put the whole nine yards into one shirt!"

Well, that does contain the phrase in question and it does relate to yards of material, which is one of the commonly repeated origins. This appears to be by pure chance though. After all, the individual words are common enough and have to appear together arbitrarily sometimes. This can't be accepted as the origin.

To get a more plausible source we have to come forward to as recent a date as 1967. In 'The Doom Pussy (A narrative about the Vietnam War and the men who are fighting it)', by Elaine Shepard.

A storyline in the book concerns a letter to a serviceman from a sweetheart, promising him comprehensive sexual favours when he gets back home. His response to this is:

"God. The first thing in the early pearly morning and the last thing at night. Beds all over the gahdam house. The whole nine yards."

It isn't clear if the author coined the phrase herself, although the manner of its use in the story would suggest not. Ms. Shepard died in September 1998, so unfortunately we can't ask her.

Although the precise origin of any particular phrase may be difficult to determine, the date of its coinage usually isn't. Phrases that are accepted into common use appear in newspapers, court reports, novels etc. very soon after they are coined and continue to do so for as long as the phrase is in use. Anyone who puts forward an explanation of an origin for 'the whole nine yards' which dates it to before the 1960s has to explain the lack of a printed record of it prior to 1967. If, to take the most commonly repeated version for instance, the phrase comes from the length of WWII machine gun belts, why is there no printed account of that in the thousands of books written about the war and the countless millions of newspaper editions published throughout the 1950s and 60s? The idea that it pre-dates the war and goes back to the 19th century or even the Middle Ages is even less plausible.

The likelihood that the phrase originated in the 1960s is supported by the lack of any evidence prior to 1967 and the ample printed citations from soon after that. "The whole nine yards" was in wide enough circulation in the USA in the late 1960s for it to be appearing in newspaper adverts. There are many examples of this, as here from the 'Playground Daily News', Fort Walton Beach, Florida, 1st May 1969:

'Four bedroom home, located in Country Club Estates. Running distance from Golf Course. Completed and ready to move in. This home has "the whole nine yards" in convenience.'

Perhaps the best evidence that the phrase is from no earlier than 1961 is this... Ralph Boston broke the world long jump record in May 1961 with a jump of 27 feet 1/2 inch. No one had previously jumped 27 feet. This was big news at the time and widely reported. How likely is it that not a single journalist worldwide came up with this headline?:

"Boston goes the whole nine yards"

And yet, they didn't. No newspaper archive contains such a line. If the phrase was coined before 1961 it certainly wasn't known to that most slang-aware of groups - newspaper journalists.

Answer 2

The saying "the whole nine yards" came from World War II. The P-51 Mustang, which was the Allied fighter plane "workhorse" held belts of machine gun ammumition in its wings, and of course they could only hold so much ammunition, and as it turns out the belts of ammunition were 27 feet, or 9 yards, long. So when a pilot says "I gave him the whole nine yards" he means he emptied all of his ammunitiion against his adversary, which didn't happen very often -- pilots tried to conserve their ammunition whenever they could.

Answer 3

I hear it was during world war 2! As I understand it the machine gun belts on airplanes were 9 yards. When a pilot issued a directive to the gunner it was give em the whole 9 yards!


http://www.yaelf.com/nineyards.shtml

Answer 4

It came from WWII fighter planes. The machine gun belts on these planes were typically nine yards long.
Thus, 'the whole nine yards' was when you shot every single bullet in the plane (even though there are two belts, 1 per wing, the guns fire in tandem).