"a brief and pithy letter nine yards long." 1873 -- was RE: [ADS-L] Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Sat May 3 12:56:05 UTC 2014

On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 8:44 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:

> 1873, Feb. 4 p.1 col.2 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
> "Mr. Tilden is out in a brief and pithy letter nine yards long."

Just a side note.  This usage came up in Jennifer Schuessler's 2
January 2013 follow-up to an earlier piece in The New York Times on
then-recent discoveries about "the whole nine yards."

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/the-whole-nine-yards-continued/

-- Bonnie

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