I think it’s hard to know whether the “modern” examples of “the whole six yards” listed at the following link (to a message to the ADS-L) are mistakes (in the sense that the speaker just got the number “wrong”) or whether any of these really are vestiges of a now vanishingly rare form of the idiom.
At the moment, we have less than a handful of appearances of “the whole six yards” from 1912-1921 and then a big whole-six-yards-less gap from 1921-1980. Difficult to say, then, that this was a preferred Southern form and that the inflated form (“the whole nine yards”) “caught on elsewhere,” especially given that the earliest sighting of “the whole nine yards” (1956) comes just a few counties over from the spot that gave us those very early usages of “the whole six yards.”
For what it’s worth, my guess is that the idiom probably did emerge from out of the foothills of the southern Appalachians or points in between, but I think it’s tricky to be sure about that given the very small number of early sightings we now have. No doubt we’ll learn more as other early usages are spotted.
I assumed that others had jumped on modern uses of whole six yards so please don’t think I was claiming anything new. I was just putting it onto the thread here.
Two things strike me as worth note. One is that the only uses found are six and nine. Why them, why the inflation, why not others, what did Jimi Hendrix know and was that why he was killed?
The other is that the phrase does seem to emerge from some older rural folk speech rather than a modern, city, urban origin.
No, I was glad you brought up that issue, Exapno Mapcase! I was just adding to the example you shared. (Great minds and all.)
Bill Safire once skewered Don Regan, then Reagan’s Chief of Staff, when in 1987 he used “the whole seven yards” in some press briefing (or testimony before Congress, I’ve forgotten). Safire really couldn’t believe that Regan had gotten “the whole nine yards” so really wrong. It was essentially, “everyone knows it’s ‘nine’ and not ‘seven.’”
So, yes, perhaps Regan hadn’t been too familiar with the expression and perhaps he did goof on the numeral used. On the other hand, perhaps Regan’s supposed misstep, which may not have been a misstep at all, should’ve been considered a clue.
Last week’s article about recent discoveries relating to the origins of the mysterious phrase “the whole nine yards” drew a huge number of online comments, most of them from people whose certainty about their own pet theories was matched only by their total lack of supporting evidence.
I just happened to catch America’s Secret Slang on the H2 channel. An “expert” on the show claimed that the WW2 ammo belts size was the most likely origin of “the whole nine yards.” Makes me wonder how accurate the other explanations were for word and phrase origins given on the show.
I saw that as well and the BS detector went on immediately.
I thought it could not be true, especially in reference to a .50 caliber BMG, because if you look at the standard .50 ammo can (avaialble widely at surplus type stores, as the cans have a variety of other uses), you can see that 27 feet (9 yd) would never fit in it.
OK, so maybe they meant in aircraft usage. Nope. In a WW2 era fighter such as the P-51 or P-47, the belts would lay out flat inside the wings in special bays. And these were not 27 feet long, either. Maybe in a B-17 ot B-24 bmber, in the turrets or “Waist” (side of fuselage) positons? No, they got the ammo from the aofrementioned ammo cans, which canot hold 27 feet.
But doesn’t the yardarm mean one outer end of a yard, so, --even if a ship has exactly three yards set on each mast-- there would be in fact 18 yardarms? And, as I understand it, at any given time, a particular ship might have more or less than three yards on each mast (the topsail might be in two pieces with two yards, there might be a royal yard set, or conversely the topgallant yard may be struck down), so you don’t want to say that a three-masted square-rigged ship always has nine yards, either.
Not to mention that rural Appalachia is about the last place I’d expect a sailing metaphor to be found, when it’s not found anywhere else.
[Apologies for beating a dead horse if you weren’t serious]
The yardarms are the tips of the yards, so it seems rather silly to bring yardarms in at all. Then you have a couple more problems: the expression seems to date to the 1960s, which is rather late for much of anyone to be discussing yards, and exactly what do the “whole nine yards” have to do with anything?
The guy on the show claimed it was from the length of ammo belts on WW2 fighter planes, which is a commonly cited story. I think he specifically referred to the ammo belts on the Hellcat fighter.
Okay, the base and casing max diameter of a .50 BMG round is 0.804 inches. 9 yard = 324 inches. .50 ammo comes in disintegrating linked belts and there has to be some room for flex. For some reason, it strikes me that .50 BMG ammo belts are 250 rounds. 324/250 = 1.296. It strikes me that just under a half inch is a leetle much for flex, but not really all that much too much.
So, some Hellcat’s flew into the Bermuda Triangle, and were sent back to rural Appalachia in 1912, losing a third of their ammo in the process, and started the phrase there?
Honestly, I don’t think calculating plausible lengths of ammo belts is the best use of time in tracking down this one.
