“I’ll buy that for a dollar” doesn’t crop up until the film ROBO-COP, I’ll wager, and then after that point it’s a common enough phrase in print.
I disagree that the specificity (“nine”) excludes a casual/funny/ironic origin.
I have been in company with many groups of friends where part of the joke is the pointless specificity. Its along the same lines a catch-phrases
e.g.
“I’d go the extra yard to put him down!”
“Yard? I’d go a whole nine yards!”
After that the stupid statement sticks for a while. Very common in student groups and military.
I’m not saying this is the origin, just that given that it TWNY emerged early 60’s, and no-one has ever really tied it down to a particular profession or object, that this explanation is as good as any (and better than most).
The problem (or one of the problems) with the 20-year lag is that WWII was an intensely-covered event. There were lots of journalists talking to the troops. There were lots of books and lots of movies, both during the war and after. Lots of memiors and “soldier’s stories” and “letters from the front.” If the phrase was common usage in the war, it would have made its way into the language much sooner, along with other war slang.
– Beruang
Has any sports journalists been asked about the football/ironic theory? It may be a quote from a coach that may be recalled.
Just a little note regarding the ammo belt theory. Ammo belts were not 9 yards long, because each type of an airplane used different lengths of belts, and there was even a difference in length in an individual airplane. In particular, belt-fed guns that were outboard used to have shorter belts than inboard guns. I have been interested all my life in WW2 aviation, I’ve read dozens of memoirs by pilots and I never came across this phrase. So I rather doubt this origin.
I’ve heard another theory along these lines. Machine gunners used to carry certain lengths of ammo belts. When they wanted to say that some target was tough, they would say “I gave it whole nine yards.” Given that it appeared in print in 1966, it could come from Vietnam war or Korean war. I actually heard this explanation some time ago in a documentary, from an actual soldier, but did not pay attention then, so I can’t supply details.
I actually suspect that we will never know the truth :-).
Impressionable youth that I was when I first read that in 1989, I held off on contributing to the issue, out of fear that Cecil would hunt me down and punish me for my temerity.
Some fourteen years later, we have the Internet, and message boards, and I can see absolute dozens of people (that was hyperbole, I admit) merrily posting away, submitting more unsupported guesses, heedless of the Cecilian consequences that await them. While one part of my mind is saying, “uuuuhhhmmmmm, those guys are going to get it,” another part is saying, “The more, the merrier!” So here I go.
I note that “yards” can refer not only to units of linear dimension (or area, or volume), but also to facilities dedicated to the storage of materials (lumberyards) or machinery (equipment yards), or to the construction of ocean-going vessels (shipyards). This suggests that a society in need of an all-out effort by an industry to attain a crucial goal could be said to throw a certain number of “yards” into the effort. Is there any recorded instance of a municipality, state, or nation having nine lumberyards, equipment yards, and/or shipyards, that might conceivably be pressed into service for the purpose of contributing to a societal effort toward some goal?
Wholly hypothetical example follows. Please ignore all inaccuracies of a historical, geographic, and industrial nature:
kaylasdad99, your example fails because the phrase doesn’t sound right. That would be better as “threw all nine yards behind the effort”. The whole suggests a certain kind of measuring, doling out length.
A similar theory put forth neglected above is that sailing ships called the beams that carried the sails yards. So the whole nine yards referred to a sailing vessel rigging all its sails. That theory fails for the same reason, plus the fact that there were never any vessels with just nine yards for sails. And, of course, if it were from sailing vessels you’d expect it to be from the 18th or 19th centuries.
Here’s a promising lead from one of the other threads that the research was never completed on. I think the range of dates for the quote was supposedly between the late 1840’s and early 1860’s
Rocket. I still look for that (supposed) quote by Disraeli from time to time. I spent a few hours looking for it at the time the thread was active. And it’s still intriguing.
The only problem is, if Disraeli made the quote, why did it not occur in print until 1966 in the US? It certainly wasn’t on the lips of everyone as a catchphrase.
I’ve also seen ads from a supposed Scottish firm making kilts that says that they make them from the whole nine yards. However, the ads are recent, and I suspect they were taking advantage of the (disproved) origin theory.
And I strongly suspect that RoboCop got the phrase from C.M. Kornbluth’s short story “The Marching Morons”, in which the TV host’s catchphrase is “Would you buy that for a quarter?” (adjusted for inflation). (The world of RoboCop seems not far removed from those of the “corporate” science fiction of Kornbluth’s story, and of Kornbluth and Pohl’s classic SF novel “The Space Merchants”.) So future language mavens would be doubly removed from the quote source.
Thank you, Cal! This has been driving me nuts for the last week; I knew I had read “Would you buy that for a quarter?” in an SF context long before Robocop, but could not for the life of me remember where. All I could remember was it being used as a catchphrase in a future society, where it was repeated to the point of annoyance.
Amd just to throw this in for what it’s worth, from pHabala’s post and the reference from Sheidlower’s site (which I enjoy), the length of the fairly common P-51’s ammo belt was around 27 feet. That consists of 400 .50 rounds. Yeah, I know that the inboard and outboard guns were 270 rounds, but when the armorers were laying out the ammo, it had to be linked up to form the longest length. It gets my vote anyway. There has been more than a few terms from the military, after all.
On the “I’d buy that for a dollar” origin, I thought it was The Running Man with Arnold Swarzeneggar, not RoboCop. Richard Dawson plays a smarmy game show host, and uses that catch phrase related to some advertisment, IIRC.
Not that it didn’t come from KornBluth, just getting the pop culture reference correct.
This is the explanation that I have heard (and prefer) for the phrase.
Sure, I have no evidence but I do have two clues;
Firstly, the word “whole” in the phrase would - to my mind - point to an American origin.
Secondly, a lot of the posts ignore that the phrase includes at the start “I Gave him…” or “Give it…” which seems to preclude American Football as it would be phrased as “Go…” even if it was sarcastic/ironic. It also knocks out many of the explanations which rely on “getting” or “having” the whole nine yards.
“Giving him/it the whole nine yards” is something that was done to someone or something else.
Just my two yen worth…
Mal
Hmm…
“The phrase is first found, to my knowledge, in 1966. (An unreliable book has claimed that it dates from the 1950s, which is itself not that implausible.)”
“The phrase is an Americanism.”
If the earliest source is 1966, and military, then odds are really high it comes from Vietnam. If the phrase originated in the military in WWII, and carried over into the Vietnam era, almost surely it would have appeared in print somewhere before 1966. The whole consciousness of the nation in WWII was focused around the war. The odds of it originating in WWII, and not appearing in a news article, a history of the war, etc. around the time seems all kinds of hard to believe. However, during Vietnam the protests tended to get more coverage than the war. I’d tend to dismiss the theory it comes from WWII unless someone can find a source before 1966.
The other likely source if it is an Americanism is football. Football has been popular in the US for quite a while. If the source does come from football, then I’d expect the vast majority of early citations to be from sports reporters, etc. Has anyone ever documented the context the phrase was found in print the first 10 times or so?
There’s 15 minutes of fame waiting for anyone at the SDMB if they can find print source using this phrase prior to 1966. 
Nine yards of cement.
Nine yards of fabric to make a men’s suit.
Nine yards of fabric to make a kilt.
Nine yards run to make a touchdown pass(if said sarcastically).
Nine yards of canvas to make a sail.
Nine yards of pipe to install a shower and toilet.
Nine yards of wiring in a transistor radio.
Nine yards of antenna wire to make a decent looped shortwave antenna.
No- the concrete version is so far the best and has not been disproven, I agree with Cece in that it is not very romantic, but it is still “good”.
Sounds dubious to me. The ready-mix concrete business isn’t something the average person has much contact with. Strange source for a term to enter the general language. Best evidence for the concrete story is if a large percentage of the earliest citations were using it in relation to concrete. The military argument seems more plausible. Soldiers come from all parts of the country, and their jargon can make it into general language around the country when they return home. However, if it does come from the military then the earliest citation from 1966 strongly points to the Vietnam war.
I agree it’s dubious- but it’s better than anything else to date.
And we didn’t have P51’s or P48’s in Veitnam. The Jets had cannons, not MGs’. So if it that late- it certainly does not refer to “belts of mg ammon from fighters”.
Now, if you can show me that the standard “box” on .50 MG ammo came in 9 yards (which MG’s were commonly hanging out the windows on the Hueys, and so were the MG1 .30), then I’d say “sounds good”. But all that ammo came in metal ammo cans- many of which are still extant. And if the typical “ammo can” belt of .30 or .50 MG ammo was 9 yards long- we would have heard that by now. I don’t remember the length of the belts myself- my experiance being mainly in the use of Agent Orange, etc.