"the whole nine"

[Bonnie Taylor-Blake]

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 8:46 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> An NFL player, being interviewed about possible reaction from other
> players, said (essentially) imagine one in the locker room, next to
> you, naked, in the shower, "the whole nine."

Thanks for bringing this up, Joel.

I once went looking for such examples (of a lopped-off "whole nine
yards" when the speaker/writer clearly meant the whole idiom) and --
as far as I can remember -- shortened versions started appearing in
the popular press in the 1990s, though I will admit it was kind of
hard to research that and, well, I sort of gave up.  In any event I've
often wondered whether the yards-less version of the idiom will
predominate in fifty years or so.

Anyway, and more importantly, Arnold Zwicky helpfully mentions "the
whole nine" as an example of nonce truncation in this August, 2009
column,

http://arnoldzwicky.org/2009/08/29/may-i-truncate/

(He returns to nonce truncation in later postings too.)

-- Bonnie

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