"the whole nine yards" 1942 (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

There are other logical possibilities (or "sub-possibilities").

  I would have expected Land to have said "_all_ nine yards."  Perhaps "the whole nine yards" was a Freudian slip reflecting his otherwise unrelated knowledge of the now-familiar metaphor.

  Or perhaps the stenographer, similarly distracted, unconsciously altered Land's hypothetical "all nine yards."

  I mention these very unlikely conditions merely for the sake of completeness.

  The far greater possibility (because less complicated), which Dave has already covered by implication, is that it was simply clumsy phrasing.

  JL



"Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC"
Subject: Re: "the whole nine yards" 1942 (UNCLASSIFIED)
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>
> (1) These words, despite many and sustained searches, have
> not been found (to my knowledge) earlier than 1942. So they
> are a fairly rare combination of words.


Yes, this particular combination of words is scarce prior to the 1960's.
However, 1942 is definitely not the first time the literal expression
appeared in print:

_Janesville [WI] Democratic Standard_ Mar 14 1855 p. 4 col 1.
"I told her to get just enough to make three shirts; instead of making
three she has put the whole nine yards into one shirt!"

Stephen's discovery is interesting, but I don't believe there is a
traceable path from the figurative use of the expression (or the related
"the full nine yards") from the 1960s, where it first is known to
appear, back to this hearing in WWII, or to any of the other pre-1960's
literal usages that have been found, or are findable in the various
archives. (I used to have access to the digital archives of the Sporting
News, and I know I found several occurences of the phrase in the context
of football pre-1960. Unfortunately I lost that access, and didn't save
them because they aren't really part of the puzzle).



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