Whole Nine Yards (1955!)

[Mullins, Bill]

Another relatively early cite:

"Hints from Heloise" Ohio | Mansfield | News Journal | 1976-01-01 p.23
col 5.
"Our family always had Thanksgiving and Christmas together with the
whole nine yards so New Year's Day was left free."

For a short while, I thought this might be the first usage I had seen
without a military connection.  But the column in question was written
by Heloise II, daughter of the original Heloise, and the one who now
does the column.  She wrote this when she was about 25.  Her father,
according to her bio, is/was ex-Air Force.


William Safire explored the phrase in his column of Oct 3, 1982.  While
I accept that it likely originated in the military around the Viet Nam
era (although the story from Richard Stratton putting it into use in
1955 is interesting . . ), it is strange to me that a broad appeal
through a nationally syndicated column only 15 years after its first
recorded use did not bring up anything related to this origin.