[Ads-l] Minor Questionable Square-Bracketed Antedating of "Whole Nine Yards"

Mon Jun 2 23:12:13 UTC 2025

The shirt joke appeared in nearly twenty newspapers in 1855, according to
Newspapers.com alone. The papers served communities from Massachusetts to
California. There's nothing improbable about the idea that a few people set
the idiom afloat by alluding to the story.

That doesn't mean it happened. Or that it didn't. Obviously many millions
of people led rich and productive lives between 1855 and 1907 (and 1967)
without ever hearing the idiom "the whole nine yards."

Fred, feel free to send the 1953 "gaslight" to OED. Just be sure to tell
'em where you got it from.

 JL

On Mon, Jun 2, 2025 at 5:01 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

> Wow, Jon, this is completely awesome.  I will never doubt you again.  Do
> you mind if I pass on this information to the OED ?  Would you rather do
> that yourself ?
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
> ________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of
> Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Sent: Monday, June 2, 2025 3:44 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Minor Questionable Square-Bracketed Antedating of "Whole Nine
> Yards"
>
>
> https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DC2zrd2ajQIw&data=05%7C02%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7C0b71db0da0404b9b671308dda20df4ca%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638844903303842237%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=FiiNku6PfuBpS%2BulxKDEXvDYeY2o51XJz7NKgwt0Clk%3D&reserved=0
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2zrd2ajQIw>
>
> Season One, Episode 19, "Draft Board." The air date (33 seconds in) is Feb.
> 18, 1953.
>
> As Ben pointed out some years ago, my recollection of "I Love Lucy" was a
> senior moment for this. There's no "I Love Lucy" "gaslight" cite in HDAS.
>
> JL
>
> On Mon, Jun 2, 2025 at 3:01 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > Thanks, John, for the mention of my research on "woke."  Subsequently I
> > found a 1925 political use of "woke."
> >
> > Fred Shapiro
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of
> > Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> > Sent: Monday, June 2, 2025 8:10 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Subject: Re: Minor Questionable Square-Bracketed Antedating of "Whole
> Nine
> > Yards"
> >
> > I don't believe that it necessarily strains credulity at all. There's a
> > difference between currency and mere existence.
> >
> > If only a few people - say, a few families, or one family - had adopted
> the
> > phrase from the joke in 1855, it could easily have taken fifty years to
> > have become sufficiently known to appear in print, even locally.
> >
> > Even though they existed, printed exx. were so rare before roughly the
> > 1960s that we were amazed when Bonnie was able to dig up the relatively
> few
> > exx. going back as far as 1907-08.
> >
> > Fred's 2023 discovery of a 1934 "woke" - thirty years before the OED and
> > eighty years before it gained wide currency - seems like a good parallel.
> > And "woke" is arguably a more plausible idiom to begin with.
> >
> > We know that figurative "the whole nine yards" was once quite rare.
> Whether
> > there's a substantive connection between the joke and the idiom, or
> whether
> > they're coincidental, is simply unknown.  And, at least for the moment,
> > unknowable.
> >
> > JL
> >
> > On Mon, Jun 2, 2025 at 7:22 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Yes, to me the key point is that the shirt anecdote, after a small
> amount
> > > of obscure newspaper coverage in 1855, disappeared.  To think it
> emerged
> > a
> > > half-century later to inspire the "whole nine yards" idiom strains
> > > credulity.
> > >
> > > Fred Shapiro
> > >
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > > From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of
> > > Stephen Goranson <0000179d4093b2d6-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > > Sent: Monday, June 2, 2025 6:20 AM
> > > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > > Subject: Re: Minor Questionable Square-Bracketed Antedating of "Whole
> > Nine
> > > Yards"
> > >
> > > I agree that the true earliest known citations in the current sense
> were
> > > found by Bonnie Taylor-Blake.
> > >
> > > Though I haven't looked into this lately, I recall that the shirt joke
> > was
> > > reprinted several times in 1855.
> > > But that (a) it is, for the origin of the later use, an irrelevant
> > > statement, and
> > > (b) additionally, unlike some jokes, it was most probably unknown to a
> > > later generation, so this may be a case in which the last known use is
> as
> > > significant as the first known use.
> > >
> > > Stephen
> > >
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > > From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of
> > > Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> > > Sent: Sunday, June 1, 2025 8:27 PM
> > > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > > Subject: Minor Questionable Square-Bracketed Antedating of "Whole Nine
> > > Yards"
> > >
> > > I have an antedating of the OED's entry for "whole nine yards" that
> will
> > > not come as a surprise to Bonnie Taylor Blake or other people who have
> > > researched that expression, and that I do not even believe should be
> > > treated as an antedating.  But the OED has a square-bracketed first use
> > (in
> > > the OED, square brackets indicate the citation is not strictly or not
> > > certainly an example of the headword), a humorous anecdote about
> quantity
> > > of cloth.  I do not agree that that anecdote is the source of the
> "whole
> > > nine yards" idiom, but I can help the OED by pointing out a slightly
> > > earlier appearance of the anecdote.
> > >
> > > whole nine yards (OED, 30 Jan. 1855 square-bracketed first use)
> > >
> > > 1855 Spirit of the Age (Raleigh, N.C.) 3 Jan. 1/6 (Chronicling America)
> > I
> > > told him to get just enough to make three shirts; but instead of making
> > > three she has put the whole nine yards in to one shirt !
> > >
> > > NOTE: In my opinion the true earliest known citations, found by Bonnie
> > > Taylor Blake, are dated 1907 ("full nine yards") and 1908 ("whole nine
> > > yards").
> > >
> > > Fred Shapiro
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > The American Dialect Society -
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