"Whole nine yards" : some negative evidence [addendum]

[Wilson Gray]

Don't forget that, during WWII, the Air Force was part of the Army,
first, as the "U.S. Army Air Corps," later, as the "U.S. Army Air
Force." The Air Force didn't become a separate branch of service till
after the war. As a consequence, we could logically expect that zoomie
slang would leak into other Army units, especially given that the Army,
like the Air Force, also uses various calibers of belted ammo. "The
whole nine yards" was not G.I. slang when I was in the Army. This
brings up another problem, that of uniformity.

If all ammo meant for use in belts was meted out so that every round
would fit into a standard ammo belt of a uniform length of nine yards,
then the number of rounds in each such belt would vary according to the
caliber of the ammo that it held. That's not S.O.P.

Then there's the problem of logistics. I was the ammunition-bearer for
a machine-gun crew. As such, I can testify that it would take Superman
to carry with one hand a single ammo cannister containing nine yards of
steel belting filled with many pounds of lead-and-brass cartridges,
each in turn filled with gunpowder. An ammo-bearer is expected to carry
at least two cans of ammo for the machine gun. And that would be in
addition to the 300 rounds of unbelted rifle ammo for his own use, his
full field pack, grenades, etc. It just couldn't be done, if there was
a standard length for an ammo belt of nine yards.

Finally, my own introduction to "the whole nine yards" was the Burt
Reynolds movie of that name. I had uncles and cousins who served in
WWII, some in the Air Corps, friends who served during the Korean-War
era and there was my own service during the Vietnam-War era. No one
that I know even today uses that phrase and, until this discussion came
up, I'd always assumed that it had something to do with football and
was to be heard only on sports talk shows.

-Wilson Gray


On Oct 31, 2004, at 8:28 PM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Whole nine yards" : some negative evidence
> [addendum]
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> On Sun, Oct 31, 2004 at 12:51:59PM -0800, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>
>> The only explanation I can think of for a putative
>> decades-long delay in getting an idiom like this into print,
>> had it really been common in some branch of the military or
>> elsewhere, would be if it had some obscene
>> connotations.
>
> One thing unaddressed in this note, Jon, is the possibility of
> a _non_-decades long delay with the same proposed etymology.
> This most recent thread has focused on the possibility that
> _whole nine yards_ is a WWII-era term in reference to the
> length of ammo belts.
>
> If the expression really did arise in the Vietnam War, then
> that would take care of the age issue. It arose, let's say,
> very early in the war, it made it into a small number of
> publications (_Doom Pussy_, the AF Academy glossary in
> _Current Slang_), it didn't spread until after the war when
> vets returned....
>
> Not that this solves the bigger problem, i.e. of total lack of
> evidence for ammo being measured in yards. But I'm not sure I
> buy the 'obscene' explanation. Apart from _snafu_, a better
> example might be _blivit_, another obscure number-based term
> from WWII--and this was found, with its obscene explanation,
> before the end of the 1940s. _whole nine yards_ would have to
> be _really_ obscene for its obscenity to be the reason for
> its nonappearance for two decades post-WWII, if it truly had
> been common then.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED
>