Whole Nine Yards

[Clark Whelton]

I grew up in a house with a coal furnace.  For residential customers at
least, coal was sold by weight, not length or volume.  You ordered a
half-ton, quarter-ton, etc.  I remember the local coal company would drive
an empty delivery truck onto a giant scale, weigh it, load it, then weigh it
again to determine the weight (and price) of the load.  The vocabulary of
coal-fired furnaces has just about disappeared.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Gage" <rgage at INTRAH.ORG>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 10:30 AM
Subject: Re: Whole Nine Yards Citation


> On Tuesday, 5 Mar 2002 at 05:12:56, Dave Wilton wrote:
> > Has anyone antedated the 1970 citation in the OED? I've seen various
> claims
> > that it dates to "the mid-60s," which is a reasonable assumption, but
> I've
> > never actually seen a citation earlier than the one in the OED.
>
> I can't provide you with a citation, but I believe the expression is
> much
> older than that.  I remember reading some place that "the whole nine
> yards"
> originated in the coal delivery business -- it meant a whole dump-truck
> load.
> When a driver began dumping his load, he would back the truck away from
> the
> pile's starting point.  If he emptied the entire load, the length of the
> pile
> was about 9 yards long.  But if the customer ordered less than a
> truck-load,
> he received less than "the whole nine yards."
>