Besides, kunilou, even if the answer to one of your questions happened to be “Nine yards”, what use would it be without some actual evidence connecting it to the expression? We’ve already got lots of guesses without documented connections, what would the good be of coming up with more?
So you are saying that all 50 cal ammo is clipped in machine gun belts and stored in ammo cans?
Barry Popik has a new entry on his site which may have finally shed some light on this phrase.
Scroll down the entry to find the email from Cmdr. Richard Stratton, an airman who served in Vietnam.
I quote part of it:
- Where first heard?
Navy School of Preflight in July 1955 at the ACRAAC (Aviation Cadet Recreation and Athletic Club – a base beer hall; NavCad’s could not use O Club). Home of salacious & scatological songs, shaggy dog stories and off beat humor. - What meaning then?
Referred to the mythical Andy McTavish’s private member and the scarf knitted by him for the birthday of his affianced, Mary Margaret MacMuff. - Explained in detail?
Yes, in great detail. One of a series of stories and songs enshrining the courtship of Andy and Mary Margaret.
The attachment mentioned is here.
So whaddya all think? Can we say Bingo! with Popik?
Well, I have to say I am impressed. Sounds good to me. 
Tempting, but as others in the original thread over at the American Dialect Society say, “show me the print cite.”
I’m not trying to be a curmudgeon, and I personally think this is the real deal, but when someone finds this story in the Pensacola Naval archives from anytime before 1966, it’s probably the real deal.
Even if the memory is accurate, the form in which the whole nine yards is used doesn’t tell us anything about the origin of the phrase. It’s clear that if the whole nine yards is the punchline of a joke, then it’s a phrase that’s already in widespread use.
A 1955 cite might mean that a World War II origin is more likely than the Vietnam origin, but that particular joke doesn’t give us more info than that.
For whatever it’s worth, the song is fairly well known on the Renaissance-Faire circuit.
I don’t think that’s clear at all. The punchline of a joke must be set up before it’s given, and in some cases, it’s set up in some element of popular culture. But here, it seems to be following the more usual method of being set up in the body of the joke. Mr. MacTavish exclaims “What, the whole nine yards?”, not because that was a widespread expression, but merely because that happens to be the length of the scarf he overenthusiastically knitted.
It seems that the song, “Angus And The Kilt”, written by Lolly Foy, was copyrighted in 1991.
Odd, though, that one of the spurious explanations floating around for origin of this phrase is that nine yards is the amount of fabric in a Scotsman’s kilt. I’m not sure if that makes me more suspicious or more accepting.
Sorry to bump this, but it seems like the most current factual thread on “the whole nine yards” on SDMB.
There’s a 1971 newspaper article available via Newspaper Archive (Burlington NC Daily News, Aug 11 71, pg 20-A, bottom right) which contains the following short factoid, devoid of context:
What the heck does that mean?? It’s within 4 years of the first print cite and yet the meaning seems to be completely different. I assume that it’s a gambling reference. And why does 9x100=1000?
And Newspaper Archive also contains an 1855 usage of “the whole nine yards” which is in the context of a humorous story a la Angus and the scarf, about a judge who gets punk’d (as the kids today say) by a friend who has a seamstress make a shirt from 9 yards of fabric instead of the usual 3 yards.
The judge then has to tuck the extra 6 yards of fabric into his pants, to the merriment of all, including his wife’s, when she thinks it’s another woman’s shift. (Tioga County Agitator, March 29 1855, pg 1)
No, this isn’t a completely different usage. “The whole nine yards” was already being used to mean “all of it”, and presumably $1000 is “all of it”. As for the 9 x 100 = 1000, I have no clue.
Now THAT is a curious find. However, this might be a one-off usage unrelated to the current usage. Unlikely anyone in the military in the 1960s would have been aware of this article. And if “the whole nine yards” had been in common oral usage since back to 1855, quite remarkable it wouldn’t show up in print again until 112 years later.
Well, I guess what I was getting at is that usually “the whole nine yards” is used to mean “everything”, just like “kit and caboodle” and “everything but the kitchen sink.” (No one ever says “my new Toyota has everything but the kitchen sink and a navigation system.”)
But here it’s used to mean “9 things taken together as a whole.” And reading over the Doom Pussy cites in another thread, it’s also used that way once in that book. (The character gets a spa treatment and the hot towel on his head is the “ninth yard.”)
Splitting hairs, I agree, but it is a subtle difference in meaning.
But my Toyota does have a kitchen sink.
Funny thing, I’ve researched Scottish and Irish medieval clothing and textiles for years. Even met with a museum curator in Dublin to discuss some bog finds and her new book.
With that in mind, I’ve heard the famous “nine-yards-to-a-kilt” thing for years, but I’ve yet to see any extant proof.
People wove what they wove, and wore it. If peasant wove 3 yards, 7 yards, 6 ells or whatever it’s what he wore.