whole nine yards

[Stephen Goranson]

I can pass along some new information, thanks to Bonnie Taylor-Blake, and add a few comments, not claiming the last word on the subject, but hoping to get a bit closer to solution.

Many months ago I wrote (snail mail) to Robert Wegner, author of the 1962 usage of "the whole nine yards," but received no reply. Recently I emailed a colleague of his at Alma College, where he is an emeritus prof, and it was forwarded to his daughter. A poster at The Straight Dope Message Board, Wendell Wagner, also emailed her. She replied to him, apparently thinking my mails were from him too, as she referred to the snail mail and to a link I provided in email (to Ben Zimmer's Word Routes treatment), which don't apply to the Straight Dope correspondent. I have emailed her again, as the poster suggested she not be bombarded with requests, and he bowed out. So far, though she reports her Father's memory as notably diminished, she said that he said that the nine yards refers to navy shipyards in World War II. Of course memory is not always reliable. But this testimony leads me to reintroduce the 1942 quote--and possible related contemporary uses--as potentially the literal s!
 ource of the figurative meaning.

In Bonnie's 1962 Car Life find Gale Linster wrote of auto options as nine yards of "goodies"; Wegner wrote of a set of burdensome things. Michigan's Voices, where Wegner's 1962 story appeared, I may recall, hosted early opponents of US involvement in Vietnam, more on the side of concern with (Eisenhower's) "military-industrial complex" as a possibly negative thing.

 I think the nine yards refers to everything in a big production, mot just any project, and not to a list nine linear yards long. On count or mass in the 1942 quote see Clai Rice and Laurence Horn in ads-l archives. Wegner reportedly said he always used it "to express extravagance, or an all-out effort." I suspect that the Liberty Ships production was recalled in the post-Sputnik and race-to-the-moon era, with focus moved from ships to aerospace. Perhaps in some popular US-wide medium, hence brush salesman, teenagers, as well as "as the airmen say." Admiral Land (in charge of the Liberty Ships nine yards and the 1942 source) became head of an air transport association and consultant to General Dynamics, a defense contractor. And Henry Kaiser (new shipbuilder) campaigned in public (in newspapers, Life Magazine etc.) to convert the shipyards to airplane production. Disney released a movie in 1943: Victory Through Air Power (now on youtube); there was also a book with the same !
 argument. Such a trajectory from ships to aerospace could help explain the persistent sense many have that the phrase relates to WW II  but is attested later, in a related, but advanced, government contracting setting.

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

PS. The 1964 reporter, once given as Stephen Trumbell, is more often credited as Trumbull.

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