Whole nine yards (again)

[rutnut]

Looks to me like the real answer is the length of the list of possible, undocumented derivations. Maybe someone just made it out of whole cloth.

[bibliophage]

Welcome to the SDMB, rutnut.

A link to the column you’re commenting on is appreciated. Providing one can be as simple as pasting the URL into your post, making sure to leave a blank space on either side of it. Like so: What’s the origin of “the whole nine yards”? - The Straight Dope

You may be interested in one of the theories that came to light too recently to be included in Cecil’s column. See this page. The most interesting part is the Stratton correspondence near the bottom. The Andrew MacTavish story referred to can be read here.

[Scissorjack]

@bibliophage

You may be interested in one of the theories that came to light too recently to be included in Cecil’s column. See this page. The most interesting part is the Stratton correspondence near the bottom. The Andrew MacTavish story referred to can be read here.

The apparent military aviation connection is interesting, since one explanation I have heard is that it referred to the wingspan of a P51 Mustang: giving it “the whole nine yards” was equivalent to firing with all weapons. This theory doesn’t seem to pass muster since the Mustang had a wingspan of 37 feet, which would seem to be about 10 feet too long for the idiom: the question is, was there a miltary aircraft with a wingspan of 27 feet which would fit the explanation? It would be a pretty small plane: the Boeing P26 “Peashooter” at 27 feet 11 inches just about fits, but would seem a little early for the idiom. Are there any other feasible candidates?

[Scissorjack]

The F4 Phantom would seem to fit the timeframe of the late 50’s and early 60’s, with considerable onboard ordnance and a folded wingspan - for carrier use - of 27 feet 7 inches, and seems to have the advantage of having the pugnacity to fit the idiom. Link.

[mwbrooks]

@bibliophage

You may be interested in one of the theories that came to light too recently to be included in Cecil’s column. See this page. The most interesting part is the Stratton correspondence near the bottom. The Andrew MacTavish story referred to can be read here.

The MacTavish story is especially interesting in that it seems to establish the phrase “the whole nine yards” in U.S. military aviation in the 1955 time frame. But I’ll get back to that in a moment.

To explain the phrase from an aviation standpoint, it isn’t necessary to find the whole phrase in use during WWII, as has been suggested. All that is necessary is to explain how the idea came to be that a belt of ammunition was nine yards long, and that that idea was still current when the “whole nine yards” phrase was coined.

I will propose a theory based on two solid foundations: human fallibility and Wikipedia!

The ammunition in question is for the .50 caliber M2 Browning machine gun, which was developed in the 1920’s and is still very much in use today. It seems to be widely believed that a standard belt of WWII .50 caliber ammunition was nine yards long. The likely fact that this is incorrect is taken to disprove the notion as the origin of “the whole nine yards,” especially since the phrase did not appear during WWII.

But who says the notion upon which a phrase is based has to be correct? And who says the currency of .50 caliber aircraft ammunition ended with WWII?

In fact, it appears that the standard .50 caliber ammo belt came in a 100 round can. Several lengths would be clipped together to fill each gun’s ammo bay in an aircraft, so the actual full-load belt length could vary from plane to plane.

From here, it seems a 100-round belt was 92 inches long. My theory is that most airmen weren’t aware of the exact length. They probably figured about 1 inch per round, or 100 inches per can.

Now, three yards is 108 inches, so I suspect airmen just rounded up to three yards of ammo per can. Utterly incorrect, of course, but eighteen inches out of 108 is a pretty tame exaggeration by military standards.

Back to 1955. Offhand, the three U. S. jet fighters I know of that were active in the 1950’s were the F-80, the F-84, and the F-86. Of these, if Wikipedia is to be believed, the F-80 and F-84 loaded 300 rounds per gun, and the F-86 seems to have loaded about 200 rounds for two of its six guns and 300 each for four guns.

If, as I propose, airmen thought of a can of ammo as three yards, then three cans (300 rounds) would naturally be nine yards in the airman’s parlance (despite the actual length of 22 feet). So I think we have reason to suspect “nine yards” was considered a full load of ammunition not in WWII, but during the Korean war in the 1950’s; when, incidentally, I gather it was not uncommon for pilots to pump a full load of ammunition into a Mig-15.

Back to the MacTavish story. The idea of a nine-yard scarf seems much less credible to me than the ammo belt theory. But it’s just the sort of bawdy back-construction of a catch phrase that is likely to turn up in a BS session. So I claim it establishes the “nine yards” phrase at exactly the right time and place to support the ammo belt theory.

[mwbrooks]

@mwbrooks

If, as I propose, airmen thought of a can of ammo as three yards, then three cans (300 rounds) would naturally be nine yards in the airman’s parlance (despite the actual length of 22 feet).

Oops. That should be 23 feet.

[samclem]

@mwbrooks

The MacTavish story is especially interesting in that it seems to establish the phrase “the whole nine yards” in U.S. military aviation in the 1955 time frame. But I’ll get back to that in a moment.

To explain the phrase from an aviation standpoint, it isn’t necessary to find the whole phrase in use during WWII, as has been suggested. All that is necessary is to explain how the idea came to be that a belt of ammunition was nine yards long, and that that idea was still current when the “whole nine yards” phrase was coined.

I will propose a theory based on two solid foundations: human fallibility and Wikipedia!

The ammunition in question is for the .50 caliber M2 Browning machine gun, which was developed in the 1920’s and is still very much in use today. It seems to be widely believed that a standard belt of WWII .50 caliber ammunition was nine yards long. The likely fact that this is incorrect is taken to disprove the notion as the origin of “the whole nine yards,” especially since the phrase did not appear during WWII.

But who says the notion upon which a phrase is based has to be correct? And who says the currency of .50 caliber aircraft ammunition ended with WWII?

In fact, it appears that the standard .50 caliber ammo belt came in a 100 round can. Several lengths would be clipped together to fill each gun’s ammo bay in an aircraft, so the actual full-load belt length could vary from plane to plane.

From here, it seems a 100-round belt was 92 inches long. My theory is that most airmen weren’t aware of the exact length. They probably figured about 1 inch per round, or 100 inches per can.

Now, three yards is 108 inches, so I suspect airmen just rounded up to three yards of ammo per can. Utterly incorrect, of course, but eighteen inches out of 108 is a pretty tame exaggeration by military standards.

Back to 1955. Offhand, the three U. S. jet fighters I know of that were active in the 1950’s were the F-80, the F-84, and the F-86. Of these, if Wikipedia is to be believed, the F-80 and F-84 loaded 300 rounds per gun, and the F-86 seems to have loaded about 200 rounds for two of its six guns and 300 each for four guns.

If, as I propose, airmen thought of a can of ammo as three yards, then three cans (300 rounds) would naturally be nine yards in the airman’s parlance (despite the actual length of 22 feet). So I think we have reason to suspect “nine yards” was considered a full load of ammunition not in WWII, but during the Korean war in the 1950’s; when, incidentally, I gather it was not uncommon for pilots to pump a full load of ammunition into a Mig-15.

Back to the MacTavish story. The idea of a nine-yard scarf seems much less credible to me than the ammo belt theory. But it’s just the sort of bawdy back-construction of a catch phrase that is likely to turn up in a BS session. So I claim it establishes the “nine yards” phrase at exactly the right time and place to support the ammo belt theory.

Well thought-out, but probably incorrect.

If, in the 1950’s, it was not uncommon for a fighter pilot to unload “the whole nine yards,” then the phrase would most likely have appeared in print before it actually did(1962, BTW).

Actually, to bring readers up to speed, to read the latest two finds for the phrase(both of which were discovered by Dopers!!), let’s visit Professor Benjamin Zimmer’s Language Log:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004623.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005107.html

To quote from Zimmer in the second article:

Thus, despite all the theorizing about the provenance of “nine yards,” it appears that the phrase merely began as an exaggerated way to describe a long “laundry list” of items, not necessarily some material like ammunition or fabric that can be measured in yards. On the ADS list, Doug Wilson suggests the image here is that of a long list of features on a window sticker at an auto dealership. So “nine yards” could simply refer to the length of an itemized list of this sort, with “nine” a more or less arbitrary figure for hyperbolic purposes.

.

This is the best that the professional linguists have to offer(so far). As databases are extended to every printed word, we may yet find earlier examples, but I seriously doubt that the expression came from ammo belts. Just my opinion.

[mwbrooks]

@samclem

If, in the 1950’s, it was not uncommon for a fighter pilot to unload “the whole nine yards,” then the phrase would most likely have appeared in print before it actually did(1962, BTW).

Not necessarily. For one thing, the F-86 and some other .50-caliber armed planes were probably retained in supporting roles well past the Korean war, and it would have remained familiar to pilots and airmen well into the 1960’s.

Also, the phrase as we know it might not have been coined immediately. We could interpret the 1962 citation not as a “casual” usage of a well known phrase, but rather an early attempt at using the “nine yards” idea in speech, before the cliché as we know it came into common use. If the writer in question came from the military, he might well have thought the idea was more common than it actually was.

Even after the phrase was coined in its current form, there may have been a delay between oral use and print. Today we’re used to a moment of whimsy becoming a flashdot or slashmob (or whatever it is) within a matter of minutes. Not so in the '50s. And the military flight line is a more sequestered environment than, say, a baseball dugout or a night club. A phrase common in the military might well go unnoticed in the press until someone familiar with it happens to retire and start writing his memoirs, or using the phrase in civilian contexts.

You might notice another edge to my argument that misconceptions can serve as an origin of speech. It applies as well to misconceptions about bolts of cloth, or loads of concrete. But of the origins suggested for “the whole nine yards,” I still maintain that the idea of an ammo belt’s length seems to be the most proximate.

Offhand, I think it would be interesting to search for the phrase “nine yards” in U. S. pilots’ Korean war mission debriefing transcripts, if they still exist. The setting might have been a bit too formal for the phrase to turn up, but if it’s there, that would be pretty convincing.

[samclem]

@mwbrooks

Even after the phrase was coined in its current form, there may have been a delay between oral use and print. Today we’re used to a moment of whimsy becoming a flashdot or slashmob (or whatever it is) within a matter of minutes. Not so in the '50s. And the military flight line is a more sequestered environment than, say, a baseball dugout or a night club. A phrase common in the military might well go unnoticed in the press until someone familiar with it happens to retire and start writing his memoirs, or using the phrase in civilian contexts.[

I agree with you mostly. As an example, Doom Pussy, by Elaine Shepard, was no doubt a popular book about Viet Nam, published in 1967. (Now remember, prior to 1967, we only have two print cites for the phrase(and one of those was not the exact phrase). But, starting in 1967, in the next three years, we have 4-6 more print cites, all of which have some connection to the military. Of course, Shepard’s book would have been read by many military people who served in Viet Nam.

@mwbrooks

You might notice another edge to my argument that misconceptions can serve as an origin of speech. It applies as well to misconceptions about bolts of cloth, or loads of concrete. But of the origins suggested for “the whole nine yards,” I still maintain that the idea of an ammo belt’s length seems to be the most proximate.

And I respectfully disagree.

@mwbrooks

Offhand, I think it would be interesting to search for the phrase “nine yards” in U. S. pilots’ Korean war mission debriefing transcripts, if they still exist. The setting might have been a bit too formal for the phrase to turn up, but if it’s there, that would be pretty convincing.

I think that’s a marvelous idea. I’m not sure things like this exist(still) but it would be helpful.

[Tammi_Terrell]

@samclem

(Now remember, prior to 1967, we only have two print cites for the phrase(and one of those was not the exact phrase).

Oops, don’t forget three related sightings from 1966 that are roughly contemporaneous with Elaine’s Shepard’s visit to Vietnam (to gather material for Doom Pussy, which was published in early 1967).

Adding on to samclem’s list, I think this is what we’ve got so far (note the variety of forms and uses of the phrase in these early sightings),

1. December, 1962, “all nine yards of” in a letter to Car Life, Language Log: Great moments in antedating, part 2: all nine yards of goodies

2. April, 1964, “the whole nine yards” in a newspaper article about NASA slang, Language Log: Great moments in antedating

3. June, 1966, “the whole nine yards” in a newspaper article describing a collection of Indiana folklore, http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0706D&L=ads-l&P=6810

4. September, 1966, “the nine yards of” at a symposium of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0706D&L=ads-l&P=5152

5. September, 1966, multiple instances of “the whole nine yards” in Wings of the Tiger: A Novel, http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0711a&L=ads-l&D=1&F=&S=&P=15082

6. 1966 (published early 1967), multiple instances of “the whole nine yards” (and variants) in Doom Pussy, e.g., http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0410e&L=ads-l&P=3120 and http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/whole_nine_yards_the/ (Is there a concise listing elsewhere of all examples to be found in Doom Pussy?)

– Tammi Terrell