whole nine yards

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>"Sunday comes, I must go,
>Swing nine yards of calico."

This is an old metonym, a specialized form of "[piece of] calico" =
"woman". "Nine yards of calico" means "a woman's dress" and hence "a
woman". Nine yards was considered a conventional amount for this use.

Of course one swings his [female] square dance partner, and this woman is
the "nine yards of calico" here.

Here is a much older and more overt example:

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_Brooklyn Daily Eagle_, 21 Feb. 1853:

<<COURTING. -- One of the most delicate avocations that some young men
have, is when they have made up their mind that nine yards of calico is an
essential and necessary requirement to their happiness and comfort in this
mundane sphere. ....>>

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The Manly Wade Wellman quotation in the "nine yards" entry in HDAS also
refers to this metonym, I THINK, although this is obfuscated by reference
to a supposedly traditional "nine-yard shroud" (I'm still waiting for any
corroboration of such a traditional shroud length). I can explain further
if anyone's interested.

I don't know whether there is or ever has been a dichotomy between
"bit/piece of calico" = "girlfriend"/"date" and "[whole] nine yards of
calico" = "wife"/"marriage".

Possibly irrelevant and coincidental: in the book "The Doom Pussy" where
TWNY first appeared in print (AFAIK), the context in two of three cases
would easily permit "whole nine yards" to stand for "marriage"/"wife" or
"[relationship with a] woman".

-- Doug Wilson