The Whole Six Yards of It

Sat Sep 8 17:16:29 UTC 2012

At 9/8/2012 12:17 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>Could the fact that standard sizes for haulers back then (for coal, logs,
>or concrete) were six-yard, nine-yard, twelve-yard and 18-yard have played
>a part in the use of the phrase?

I'm beginning to think that the "It" in "The
Whole Six [Cubic] Yards of It" is a euphemism.  :-)

Joel

>DanG
>
>
>On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 at 8:38 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: The Whole Six Yards of It
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Looking at the newspaper page more carefully than I did previously, I
> > think Dave is right on the mark here.  This may well be a precursor version
> > of "the whole nine yards."  There is an article in the first column of the
> > page about this same baseball game, then there is a second item that gives
> > a more detailed account.  The second item is the "whole six yards" of the
> > game story, the exhaustive version, thus appearing to use "whole six yards"
> > in a very similar way to the later usage of "whole nine yards."
> >
> > Fred Shapiro
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________________
> > From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Dave
> > Wilton [dave at WILTON.NET]
> > Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2012 7:56 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Re: The Whole Six Yards of It
> >
> > I disagree and think this may indeed be a predecessor of "the whole nine
> > yards," although that's a very tentative conclusion as this is an early and
> > isolated appearance.
> >
> > "Yard" is not all that common a term for a ball field. Yes, it is attested,
> > but it is relatively rare, and the simple use of "yard" in a headline would
> > not immediately bring to mind a ball field, even in a baseball context.
> >
> > Furthermore and more importantly, the article is not about the league and
> > provides no information about how the other five teams are faring, as one
> > would expect if the title referred to the league. Instead, it is about the
> > Spartanburg Spinner's previous day's game against Greenville, giving a more
> > detailed, inning-by-inning prose account of the game. This fits the current
> > sense of "the whole nine yards" perfectly--it provides a lengthier, more
> > detailed description than the usual short article accompanied by a box
> > score
> > that make up most newspaper accounts.
> >
> > Finally, there are many examples of phrases with numbers that went through
> > multiple versions with different numerical values before settling on the
> > one
> > that became canonical (e.g., "cloud nine"). It would not be surprising if
> > "the whole nine yards" had other numbers in the phrase in its early
> > incarnations.
> >
> > Looking through other issues of the paper that are available on Google (I'm
> > not sure how much is available to those of you in the States; Google does
> > not provide full-view display of many of its texts to those of us north of
> > the border), the paper does have a semi-regular feature called "Running 'Em
> > Out" by A. G. Keeney (see 5 August 1921 for an example) that serves the
> > same
> > function, only giving the detailed account of the game player-by-player
> > instead of inning-by-inning. Perhaps Keeney was off that day and someone
> > else filled in using a different format. Or perhaps, given that Google only
> > displays about 5% of the issues of this paper, the "Whole Six Yards" is a
> > regular feature that alternates with Keeney's column, only Google has
> > chosen
> > to make available only this one example.
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> > Of
> > Stephen Goranson
> > Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2012 6:33 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Re: The Whole Six Yards of It
> >
> > Well, when I pointed out offlist the second article about the same game on
> > the same page, and, under it, the league standings, listing the six
> > teams--"How they Stand" (they being Columbia, Greenville, Charlotte,
> > Charleston, Augusta, Spartanburg)--I gave my view that "The Whole Six Yards
> > of It" refers to these six teams, and their ball yards, and the It is the
> > South Atlantic league.
> >
> > This, I suggest, is no precursor of "the whole nine yards" unless we take
> > precursor in a weak sense with vanishingly-small context. Of course there
> > is
> > the pattern "the whole X" (shebang etc.) which in some sense could be
> > called
> > a precursor, but whole nine yards likely had a literal referent before it
> > became figurative. And I think that literal referent more likely comes not
> > from what OED lists as yard noun 2 (stick, 36 inches, etc.) but from noun
> > 1,
> > which includes, among other things, shipyards [and 9 shipyards were not
> > mentioned only once, in 1942] and... baseball yards.
> >
> > E.g., from OED
> >  ballyard n. Baseball = ballpark n. 1.
> >
> > 1897   Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Evening Gaz. 26 Aug. 5/3   One of the most
> > sensational plays made at the ball yard this season.
> > 2002   D. Martin & B. Martin Best of San Francisco (ed. 5) i. 26   Pacific
> > Bell Park has the look of a grand old ballyard with its brick façade.
> >
> > [An off-topic question: why is Camden Yards plural?]
> >
> > I find largely non-persuasive Arnold Zwicky's April 10, 2009 blogpost "The
> > Whole X." Among other things, AZ wrote: "I’m going to suggest that this
> > might be a fruitless search, akin to asking who the original Mac, Joe,
> > Charlie, Stan, etc. was in vocatives addressed to men." I don't find the
> > two
> > "akin" in any stong sense (especially for the misheard Stan.)
> >
> > Entire and full nine yards are plausibly seen as later variants of whole
> > nine yards, as is nine yards of goodies.
> > In "...all going into a common report when the whole nine yards gets
> > wrapped
> > up" note that the project is not identical with the later report.
> >
> > Stephen Goranson
> > www.duke.edu/~goranson <http://www.duke.edu/%7Egoranson>
> >
> > ________________________________________
> > From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
> > Bonnie
> > Taylor-Blake [b.taylorblake at GMAIL.COM]
> > Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2012 2:42 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: [ADS-L] The Whole Six Yards of It
> >
> > Well, since Fred Shapiro has just brought up "the whole nine yards" and
> > Geoff Nunberg has just mentioned (potential) baseball apocrypha ...
> >
> > Any thoughts on what's at the following link?  You'll find an article
> > published 7 May 1921 describing, inning by inning, a just-completed
> > baseball
> > game between the Spartanburg Spartans and the Greenville Spinners.
> >  The article is titled "The Whole Six Yards of It."
> >
> > http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=cmMsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=8skEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3787
> > ,
> > 2164793&dq=whole-six+yards-of-it&hl=en
> >
> > Here are a few things we do know.  Both South Carolina squads were in the
> > six-team South Atlantic (minor) league.  Further, another description of
> > the
> > ballgame can be found in the upper left of the whole page.  And, finally,
> > this doesn't appear to have been the title of a regular column:
> >  as far as I can tell, "The Whole Six Yards of It" was used just once in
> > issues of the *Spartanburg Herald-Tribune* appearing in Google's news
> > archive.
> >
> > What, if anything, do we make of the paper's use of "The Whole Six Yards of
> > It"?
> >
> > -- Bonnie
> >
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