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

[Jonathan Lighter]

We've been focusing on WWII because the recent "MG belt" theory has become so popular and just interesting enough to warrant exploration.

"The whole nine Montagnards"?  Surely this is too ingenious.  "All nine" would be the natural way to refer to a collection of separate items.  "The whole nine" suggests a solid mass of something. (This is another strike against the "MG belt" theory, BTW.)  And wouldn't "all nine tribes" be even more idiomatic than "all nine Yards"?

I think Yards/yards is a coincidence.

JL


Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Stephen Goranson
Subject: Re: "Whole nine yards" : some negative evidence [addendum]
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Perhaps recall that the earliest available uses are not related to machine
guns. Nor, really, especially related operations of the Air Force.

1968 (written 1967 in Vietnam) The Doom Pussy:
"Most Americans enjoyed getting the full nine yards that is
included in the French barber's repertoire."(p.161/140pb)
"God. The first thing in the early pearly morning and the last thing at night.
Beds all over the gahdam house [of a woman back home]." (p173/150 pb)
The same book discusses Montagnards, called yards. And in I Corps area R.L.
Mole was teaching GIs about nine tribes of Montagnards. (The full ally
compliment: the whole nine yards.)

The Current Slang Air Academy issue merely defines as "adv. All the way." No
machine gun nor airplane connection indicated.

April 1970 Word Watching v. XLV n.4 "A Little Tale With Footnotes" makes use of
Air Force Slang James Work gathered. Again, not especially air force embedded
usage. "The whole nine yards [note: "the entire thing"] would really be numbah
ten if he augered and bought the farm...."

1972 Strawberry Soldier by and about a Special Forces, not USAF, vet, p18,
about the decorations on his uniform, several named, altogether, "the whole
nine yards."

Why focus on machine guns when the earliest book has a special sense of 'yards?

Stephen Goranson


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