Where does the expression "Dressed to the Nines" come from?

Answer 1

Somebody who is "dressed to the nines" or "dressed up to the nines" is dressed to perfection or superlatively dressed. Writers have run up a whole wardrobe-full of ideas about where the expression comes from, which indicates clearly enough that nobody really knows for sure.

One very persistent theory is that the British Army's 99th Regiment of Foot were renowned for their smartness, so much so that the other regiments based with them at Aldershot in the 1850s were constantly trying to emulate them – to equal "the nines".

The big problem with this explanation is that the phrase "to the nines" is actually a good deal older – it was first recorded in the late 18th century in poems by Robert Burns. In its earlier days it wasn't linked to high standards of dress but to any superlative situation: people could refer to "praising a man's farm to the nines", for example.

The Victorian philologist Walter Skeat sugested that it could originally have been "dressed to the eyes", which in medieval English would have been "to then eyne"; the phrase could afterwards have mutated by what grammarians call metathesis, the same principle that caused "a norange" to change to "an orange". That might have been a really convincing explanation, except that there's a gap of several hundred years between this supposed creation and its first appearance in print. No scholar now believes this is the origin.

Other attempts at explanation connect it with the nine Muses, or with the mystic number nine, or even perhaps reaching a standard of nine on a scale of one to 10 – not perfect, but doing very well. These numerological theories seem to be the more likely ideas behind it, but we can't be sure.

Answer 2

The original phrase in old English was “dressed to the eyne” meaning dressed to the eyes. Dressed up to the nines is a corruption of the original expression.

Answer 3

"This expression is, according to the complete Oxford English Dictionary, recorded from 1793 in the poetry of Robert Burns: 'Thou paints auld Nature to the nines', it is recorded in a slang dictionary published in 1859. "

Answer 4

I think my friend Debbie invented it. She is forever saying bla bla bla on the phone!

Answer 5

This site had quite a few possibilities...