Whole Nine Yards

Douglas G. Wilson douglas at NB.NET
Fri Feb 15 13:05:02 UTC 2002


> > We've known about a possible military origin for "whole nine
> > yards" for some time.
>
>Yes, indeed. My piece yesterday started from the presumption that
>everybody on the list knew the story about the military origin of the
>phrase. As you say, firm evidence is lacking. But I couldn't remember
>ever having seen it stated as confirmed fact that the Spitfire
>machine-gun belts actually were 27 feet long.
>
>Duane Campbell wrote:
>
> > I mentioned, perhaps not on list, that on NPR about a year ago
> > there was a piece on the whole nine yards. It was a two-way with
> > someone I didn't recognize and can no longer remember, but he
> > referred to a piece of sheet music he had from WWI (that's WW ONE)
> > that mentioned "the whole nine yards" in the lyrics. As I have
> > understood it, the machine gun theory goes back only to WWII. So
> > how long were the machine gun belts in The Great War?

There have been many messages on Usenet during the past decade which
addressed the ammo-belt length question. I can't vouch for their veracity,
but the impression I get is that there were often many different ammo-belts
used -- even for a particular weapon. One person did claim to have
personally measured a 250-round Browning .50-cal. belt of WWII-era type
(IIRC) at 4.5 yards in length, which would imply that a 500-round belt
might go 9 yards (although he didn't claim this). One problem is that
typically an aircraft had multiple guns so that even if a belt was nine
yards long it would represent only a fraction of the available ammunition,
thus making an unsatisfying metaphor.

I think the lengths of ammo-belts are only tangentially related to the
etymology question. Surely there are many things which are 27 feet long;
the more pertinent question is which things are/were conventionally
referred to using the words "nine yards" (although this still doesn't
answer the etymology question fully) ....

How would I find the music referred to by Duane Campbell? When I searched
this subject a while ago, I did find mention of a song/tune called "Swing
Nine Yards of Calico" -- of unknown (to me) age but sort of
venerable-sounding ... no surprise since nine yards was once apparently a
rather conventional quantity of cloth -- from which one might make a dress
... or a shroud [cf. HDAS] (don't believe assertions to the contrary too
readily) .... And I'm fully convinced that nine yards is a conventional
length for a sari ... also a conventional concrete-mixer capacity at least
as early as about 1970 ... also ... also ....

The ammo-belt hypothesis is as good as any of the conventional ones AFAIK.
But I tentatively prefer my own 'rude' candidate, presented on this list a
while back. (^_^)

-- Doug Wilson



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