It was used to denote expending all of ones’ ammunition in one ‘press’ from the wing mounted World War two planes, the P52 I think - the ammo belts were 9 yards long…
Ooooh! Me! Meeeee! I know this one.
Your typical concrete transport truck holds nine cubic yards of concrete. When you want everything in the vessel, you’re getting the whole nine yards.
Ack - Missed a comma, looks like I am certain - add one after the P52 please and re-read! 
The Master Speaks:
Are we doing analogies here, or just general figures of speech? [/jr mod]
Well, damn. Won’t be the last time I’m wrong to be sure. How can you blame me? I work in the construction industry…most notably in the part of it that uses concrete trucks a whooooole lot. :smack:
ROFL - I would have put money on your concrete idea! (Until I read better;)
I never realised this particular expression was so, err, ‘unauthenticated’ !
"The pot calling the kettle black"
I think everyone understands that one even though most of us don’t cook in a big black iron pot or have a big black kettle.
But I used to watch sheep in the meadow from my kitchen window while I washed dishes!
"Throw the baby out with the bathwater" Does that still make sense?
I just got a puppy, after never having lived with one before. When I see him trotting around after me, I always think, “Wow, he’s following me around like a puppy…oh.”
But I don’t think that phrase will become obsolete any time soon.
http://english1010.com/throw_the_baby_out_with_the_bathwater.htm
Throw the baby out with the bathwater
Meaning:
We use this expression when we want to keep the valuable things when we get rid of the things we don’t want. It is usually used in the negative to mean that we don’t want to throw out the good stuff when we throw out the bad stuff.
How about
Sweating Like A Pig
As has been pointed out many times, Pigs don’t sweat, which makes this analogy particularly pointless.
Of course, the real meaning must be something like “Sweating so much and so pungently that you smell Like A Pig”. Having grown up near the Rutgers College Agriicultural Station (or, as we called it when I was little, “The Piggy Farm”), I very early learned what pigs in much smell like. Our daughter MilliCal has been to enough farms to appreciate this one, too, but I’ll bet a lot of city and suburban folk haven’t first-hand olfactory experience of a pig.
It would be a P51.
Funny - my friend and I were recently discussing the phrase “water under the bridge.” Which confused the heck out of us. It basically means it’s in the past, right? Shouldn’t we say it’s “water that passed under the bridge a long time ago?” Even then it sounds rather odd.
I used to abhor anutical clichés, but I’ve come about.
Sailboat
And then I even stopped spelling “nautical”.
Sailboat
CDs skip the same way records do, except much faster, so instead of repeating two or three words over and over, it’ll repeat about one sound. But CDs ALSO skip forward, omitting a few seconds of material, which is totally different.
I don’t think “… hung in the air in exactly the way bricks don’t” will become obsolete for a very long time, if at all.