the phrase “the whole nine yards” is not as old as many people might imagine. its first known published use was in a 1966 novel by elaine shephard called “doom pussy” about air force pilots in vietnam.
the quote is as follows 'the first thing in the early pearly morning and the last thing at night. beds all the gahdamn house. the whole nine yards."
the term is not used in the book to describe the amount of ammo expended, which one might expect if it were the origin of the phrase in a book about pilots in a war.
as for the other explanations put forth by others, cecil’s comments are on point. there is no standard amount of cloth for a man’s suit and the more popular cloth related myth is tied to appalachian burial practices in which a person is buried in a shroad of 9 yards of cloth.
as for a burial plot being 9 yards of soil, that is most certainly false since most burial plots are about 4-5 cubic yards.
same for boats which have a variety of number of yards.
according to the 1964 issue of Ready Mix Concrete magazine the ‘high end’ of concrete truck capacity was about 6 1/4 yards…and since the term is published no more than 2 years later it would seem unlikely that concrete truck capacity would increase by 2 3/4 yards and enter into popular use in such a short time.
the answer…there is no certain answer. but there are many answers that are certainly not correct.
Good quote. But that book also mentions that Manly Wade Wellman wrote a poem slightly before that with the imagery of the “nine yards” of a shroud.
Which brings me to my WAG. If I remember right, that poem was published in a popular SF magazine- something that Pilots might read over in 'Nam. The imagery was that “9 yards”= shroud= death. Thus, I can see Pilots & gunners saying “I gave him/them the whole 9 yards” as in “I killed his/their ass”. This doesn’t require air-to-air dogfighting (very rare in that war) or belts of .50 cal MG ammo for the wing guns- also rare. It just requires a pilot or a gunner reading that poem and using that term as a way of saying “I killed him”.
What we’d need to find is some pilots or gunners from that area & time.
Don’t feel bad, though, slo ride. As a guest, you can’t search, and so you wouldn’t know that there are countless thousands of threads (okay, fine, dozens) on this subject. Indeed, you should feel somewhat pleased with yourself, as your post is far more accurate than the average newcomer’s, who appears with a smugly self-satisfied proclamation that “the whole nine yards is the length of an ammo belt” or “the whole nine yards is the amount of material used to construct three kilts for a wealthy highlander” or “the whole nine yards is the circumference of the magickal oak planted by Merlin to replace the one used by Arthur to build the round table” or “the whole nine yards is the length of my DICK, yo” or any of the other half-baked hypotheses folks usually present to us. So congratulations, for what it’s worth; you’ll probably fit in here just fine.
Of course, if you start arguing that .999… is not equal to 1.0, then all bets are off.
