whole nine yards

Fri Feb 18 11:49:02 UTC 2011

Thanks Joel.
By the way, a 1943 film with Humphrey Bogart, "Action in the North Atlantic,'" features a Liberty Ship.
Stephen
________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Joel S. Berson [Berson at ATT.NET]
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2011 5:20 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] whole nine yards

Off-list I offered to Stephen to look at (one of) Shaw's books, which
I could see at Harvard.  That one is:

Shaw, Alexander.
Liberty ships : a middle age review / by Alexander Shaw.
Belair, Md. : A. Shaw], 1957.
[vi], 140 p.

No luck with "whole nine yards".  The book is 99.9% pure a list of
liberty ship names and their fates.  The two and 1/2 page preface
does not say anything about yards.

The other Shaw book is 1961, "Liberty ships: twenty years later", so
might have something.  (Held by the NY Public, Mariner's Museum
Library in Newport News, Evans Library at Texas A&M, and Australian
National Maritime Museum, Pyrmont, NSW).  But  it's only 3 pages
longer -- perhaps just a few more ships he located.

At 2/10/2011 05:16 AM, Stephen Goranson wrote:
>Replies to Bill and Fred (plus, thank you, Bonnie!):
>
>To Bill:
>Yes, the original 9 emergency shipyards have been identified (list
>below). And yes other shipyards later also built "Liberty Ships"
>(assembly-line-made cargo vessels), in (I think) the largest
>shipbuilding project in history. You may determine whether the
>initial 9 yards can be remembered years later. By the way, I have
>not yet seen a copy (interlibrary loan said no one would send it) of
>Liberty ships: twenty years later / Alexander Shaw 1961 [1961, a
>potentially-interesting year...]
>[iv], 143 p. ; 28 cm. [Belair, Md. : A. Shaw].
>
> From F. C. Lane, Ships for victory; a history of shipbuilding under
> the United States Maritime Commission in World War II  (Baltimore;
> Johns Hopkins: 1951) p.51, the nine yards:
>
>South Portland, Me.-- the Todd-Bath Iron Shipbuilding Corp.
>Baltimore, Md. --Bethlehem-Fairfield Yard
>Wilmington, N.C.--North Carolina Shipbuilding Co.
>Mobile, Ala.--Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Co.
>New Orleans, La.--Delta Shipbuilding Co.
>Houston, Texas--Houston Shipbuilding Corp.
>Los Angeles (Terminal Island), Cal-- California Shipbuilding Corp.
>Richmond, Cal--Todd-California Shipbuilding Corp.
>Portland, Oregon-- Oregon Shipbuilding Corp.
>
>To Fred:
>I do not entirely know how she asked her Father, i.e., beyond what
>she told me and what is posted at Straight Dope Message Board. I did
>not prompt her to prompt any particular response. Nor am I sure
>exactly which of my mails he received and read and which she read.
>She mentioned a (one) misplaced letter. I wrote him two paper
>letters to two different addresses on two different dates. The first
>letter did not mention ships; the second letter did. The Jan. 2011
>email forwarded to her did not, though it did link to Ben Zimmer's
>treatment (as mentioned earlier) that gives a list of proposals,
>including "naval shipyards."
>
>She wrote 29 Jan 2011:
>"...In the meantime, my father is quite lucid about what believes to
>be the origin of "the whole nine yards."  He did not hesitate to say
>that he thought it derived from a WWII program to arm the nation and
>specifically build the navy.  He thought it referred to ship
>building yards on the east coast and always thought there were nine
>of them, though he couldn't verify that for sure...."
>
>Stephen Goranson
>http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
>________________________________________
>From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
>Shapiro, Fred [fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU]
>Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2011 12:26 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: [ADS-L] whole nine yards (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
>Stephen, can you tell us whether the shipyards etymology was
>volunteered by the daughter without any prompting, or whether you
>mentioned it to her as a possibility?
>
>Fred Shapiro
>
>
>
>________________________________________
>From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
>Mullins, Bill AMRDEC [Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL]
>Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2011 12:20 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: whole nine yards (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
>Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
>Caveats: NONE
>
>Have the nine shipyards spoken of by Adm Land in 1942 ever been
>identified?  Were there more of them by the end of the war?
>
>If nine is an accurate count for only a short period of time in
>mid-1942, and by the end of the war more plants had come on-line, then
>it seems odd that media 15 years later would remember only "nine yards".
>
>I'm not saying this is the case, but it seems to be an issue that would
>have to be investigated and ruled out for Stephen's hypothesis to hold
>true.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
>Behalf Of
> > Stephen Goranson
> > Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2011 6:38 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Re: whole nine yards
> >
> >
> > Hypothesis: the actual WW II nine shipyards for Liberty Ships and
>their
> > unprecedented production were recalled in some US media (not
>necessarily books
> > or newspapers), post-Sputnik, in a call to a similar can-do push for
>aerospace
> > production. and the phrase became applied in other settings as well,
>though
> > aerospace tradents (including government contractors) were significant
>in the
> > first decade and more.
> >
> >
>Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
>Caveats: NONE
>
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