"The Whole Six Yards"

Bonnie Taylor-Blake b.taylorblake at GMAIL.COM
Tue Jan 8 22:18:18 UTC 2013


On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 3:42 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
<Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:

> If I had seen the following before the recent discussion, I'd have
> simply thought they were mistakes.  Now, I'm not so sure.
>
> [Lafayette GA] _Walker County Messenger_ 25 Apr 1990 p 4A col 4 [Google
> News Archive]
>
> "That will be an impossibility until the whole "six-yards" is resolved."
>
> [Florence AL] _TimesDaily_ 26 Apr 1990 p. 8A col 6 [Google News Archive]
>
> " "We had to go the whole six yards on this case," Plott said."
>
> Elaine Dundy _Elvis and Gladys_   Jackson, MS: University Press of
> Mississippi, 2004  p. 93 [Google Books]
>
> " "We had them all," says Charlie Boren, "the whole six yards." "
> [referring to the many country bands that had appeared on a radio
> station]

Don't mind me.  Just adding to Bill's list of modern sightings of "the
whole six yards" (whether the form of the idiom is wrong or not).  --
Bonnie

"For many years now [Senator Kennedy has] sat on the Senate Antitrust
Subcommittee and, for weeks at a time, has heard the full six yards of
evidence on the monopoly issue and on its key role in the inflation
dilemma."  [From "Foreward: Jimmy Carter's Recession Economics," a
piece written by the editors of *Antitrust Law and Economics Review*
12(5): 1-18, 1980.  This sentence appears on p. 5.]

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