I understand that it’s origins come from WW2 (or maybe 1) fighter/bomber pilots, when they expended all wing gun ammunition. The ammunition came in 9 yard belts, and when they had a target that was particularly deserving or when they were able, they would “give it the whole 9 yards” expending all ammo and in theory “blowing the crap outta them”.
Charlie,
I also heard that the term referred to the length of ammunition in certain WWII planes. I’ve never heard anything about wedding gowns or any of the other stuff mentioned.
In brief, we’re not buying it, as their is no record of the expression being used until the Vietnam era, and it’s difficult to imagine a piece of WWI or WWII slang not being recorded until that late.
No fault to the OP for being unaware of the lengthy and repetitive discussions that have ensued on this point; rather, the column’s page really, really, really, really, really needs to be updated, at the very least with a link to one or more of the threads on the subject.
But hey, CharlieN, at least you remembered to include a link to the column, which is a lot better than the usual riffraff are able to manage.
I’m sure many of us on this board would love it if you had proof, but, as you’ll see if you read some of the linked threads, nobody yet seems to able to come up with any. As Cervaise said, the phrase is unknown prior to the Vietnam War, which makes it unlikely that it originated during WWII.
Admittedly, it’s not intuitively obvious what cocktail umbrellas have to do with the whole nine yards. However, if you follow that link to the 2001 column, you’ll find that the “whole nine yards” WWII ammo belts are addressed in the second part of that column. There, Cecil says:
Perhaps it was because it was indeed not commonly used? If my hunch is right, it could be that aviators (or the mechanics) knew about it but it was rarely used outside of the region, in any case, I did remember seeing an old documentary on WWII in the south pacific: I wish I knew the title but when the narrator mentioned the phrase I had a flashback to the SDMB and the endless discussions of this topic, I clearly remember the narrator saying that one of the pilots, after a very intense shootout, claimed: “We gave them the whole nine yards”
Anyhoo, I think if people reconstructing the planes from that era interviewed the former pilots and came with a book called indeed the “whole nine yards” maybe there is something to it, Other dopers with more time in their hands can investigate if these guys have the goods (aka the record) of the origin of this earwig of a phrase!:
> Perhaps it was because it was indeed not commonly used? If my hunch is right,
> it could be that aviators (or the mechanics) knew about it but it was rarely used
> outside of the region, in any case, I did remember seeing an old documentary
> on WWII in the south pacific: I wish I knew the title but when the narrator
> mentioned the phrase I had a flashback to the SDMB and the endless
> discussions of this topic, I clearly remember the narrator saying that one of the
> pilots, after a very intense shootout, claimed: “We gave them the whole nine
> yards”
Wait, let me understand this. After you had already read many SDMB discussions about the origin of “the whole nine yards” (and there have been many, many threads about this issue), you saw a documentary on World War II in which somebody used the phrase and yet you didn’t immediately get online and post to the board the name of this documentary and a description of how the phrase was used in it? Why? Anyone who finds an earlier use of the phrase than the mid-1960’s will immediately win the Nobel Prize in etymology. (Well, they would if there was a Nobel Prize in etymology, but we’ve been cheated out of one because Alfred Nobel’s wife was having an affair with an etymologist.) If you had posted this at the time, you would be famous within the world of etymologists, but now you’re just one more person who claims to have heard the phrase used before the 1960’s without any documentation. Can you understand that I am dubious that you’ve remembered this correctly? If you can’t remember the name of the documentary, why should we believe that you’ve remembered the dialogue in it correctly?
I certainly grew up hearing the story that in WWII fighter planes’ magazines held exactly 27 foot belts of .50BMG ammo [or was it .303 British ammo?], and when it was expended, and the magazine was empty [not a situation to be wished for], the pilot had gone through “the whole nine yards.”
I’m not saying that this is the accurate, absolute, epistomologically certain answer, but I sure do like it best, it fits the case, and after all, as my patron saint, Mark Twain is alleged to have said, “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”
> . . . “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.” . . .
This is the Straight Dope Message Board. Our motto is “Fighting Ignorance Since 1973.” Coming up with pseudo-clever but inaccurate stories isn’t what we’re about here. The facts are what we’re about.
Flame on. My point was that while there are any number of explainations, and the most plausible cannont be proven but fits the case better than the rest, why not stick to it, and if it happens to be the most fun, so much the better.
Back in the early days of intercollegiate football, the rules were not the same as they are today. The forward pass was illegal, for example, and the flying wedge was a legal if occasionally deadly tactic. One other difference is that you only needed nine yards instead of ten to make a first down. Hence the saying developed: “the whole nine yards.”
I personally heard Frank Merrivale say this to Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy, at the Harvard-Yale game in 1898, when Vice-President Teddy Roosevelt took the field to score the winning points.
Hey, nine yards for a first down is my personal favorite explanation for this saying, and my memory is excellent for someone who is 132 years old.
Didn’t John Ford say, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”? Well, he didn’t, actually, since the line was said by a character in the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which was written by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck, but he’s much more famous than they are, and he was the movie’s director, so he should get the credit for it.
> My point was that while there are any number of explainations, and the most
> plausible cannont be proven but fits the case better than the rest, why not stick
> to it, and if it happens to be the most fun, so much the better.
It’s not even the most fun. The explanation Exapno Mapcase just gave is more fun. Plausibility is not sufficient in etymology. There has to be some documentation. A dozen plausible but undocumented etymologies have already been offered. And if telling you that you haven’t offered evidence for your idea is flaming, you’re not going to be happy on the SDMB.
The problem here is that different fighters had different load outs. In a previous thread I listed some (see post #18):
To take a few examples of US planes:
P47-C and P47-D: 8x.50 cal MG and 425 rounds per gun
P51-D Mustang: 6x.50 cal MG and 400 rounds per gun
The F4U-1A Corsair had 6x.50 cal MG and carried 390 rounds per gun
The other problem with the fighter belt notion is that there is no good reason for the belts to be thought of in terms of yards. Some of the other explanations work better in that regard, from the ones involving cloth to the nine yards for a first down (which I have actually heard suggested as an explanation, although it is obviously too early).
Taking a measure normally referred to in yards and converting into a saying like the whole nine yards is a much more logical progression as well as an example of the way the English language is known to work. Working backwards to find a correct length that wasn’t expressed originally in yards is simply less probable as an example of language.
Charlie’s right. This is an Army Air Forces expression from World War II. The gunners on bombers had steel cans of 0.50 caliber ammunition. Each can held 27 feet of rounds folded to fit in the can. You would give an especially aggressive enemy fighter pilot “the whole nine yards” in defense of your plane.
Fighter aircraft had longer ammo belts, I’m not sure the expression was used in the fighter community.
