[Ads-l] A recent revision to the OED's online "the whole nine yards" entry

[Baker, John]

Well, we know that the "judge's big shirt" story was reprinted in a newspaper in the southern Indiana area in 1885, so it had some currency only about three decades earlier than the clear references to "whole nine yards" in the early 20th century.  "The Judge's Big Shirt," Madison (Ind.) Dollar Weekly Courier, 31 Jan. 1885, p. 4.  In my own family, sometimes we have mentioned jokes we read in a newspaper or magazine for a great many years after the joke appeared.  So I certainly don't think we can rule this origin out just based on the length of time.  On the other hand, that seems a weak reed to assert that it was the "apparent" origin.


John Baker



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2016 7:41 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: A recent revision to the OED's online "the whole nine yards" entry

> The fifty-year gap between the anecdote and the idiomatic use of the
phrase
 seems to suggest that the anecdote is apparently not the origin of the idi
om.

We simply don't know, and probably will never know, because we have no way
of knowing the oral (as opposed to the journalistic) circulation of the
story after the 1850s when it was no longer "newsworthy."

We certainly don't know the half-life of a newspaper joke in the 19th
century.

What we do know, thanks to Bonny's indefatigable research, is that the
severe restriction of early exx. of the phrase to the Ky.-Ind. border (or,
as the young people say, "the KY/IN border") seems to show its effective
_terminus a quo_.


JL

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 4:23 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: A recent revision to the OED's online "the whole nine
> yards"
>               entry
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 3:32 PM, Peter Reitan <pjreitan at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > what is in every body's mouth be true.
>
>
> Shouldn't that be, "What I tell you three times is true"? ;-)
>
>
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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