In response to this thread, what’s the best explanation you can come up with for the phrase “the whole nine yards?” Maybe if we can come up with enough ideas, one of them will be right.
My proposal: the phrase represented the worst punishment available to students in parochial schools after the Won’t Someone Please Think of the Children Act of 1976. While spankings, beatings, roddings, and knuckle-rapping had been previously unregulated, the WSPTotCA stated that students’ bottoms could not be whacked with a yardstick more than nine times.
My best guess is that it doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s just a catchy phrase somebody came up with and that caught on and spread.
Compare, for example, the extreme unlikelihood that “the whole enchilada” originates with a specific meal at a specific restaurant, or that “that’s the way the cookie crumbles” comes out of a particular bakery school.
If I had to put money down, I’d say “the whole nine yards” is the same thing. It seems tantalizingly specific, and in tracking it backward the trail seems to lead to the military in the early to mid 1960s (specifically the Air Force), so therefore we assume it must have originated from some particular incident or application. The more I watch the debate, though, the more I’ve come to believe that that assumption, while tempting, is an unsupported leap. As noted above, we have plenty of other examples of phrases that clearly never meant anything, so it seems far more likely to me that this is one of those than that there’s an actual origin that has remained stubbornly hidden despite decades of concerted investigation.
I’m pretty sure it is exactly what Unka Cecil says. A full bolt of cloth is nine yards. In the old west women had rare oportunities to buy cloth so if they could affor it, the bought “the whole nine yards.”
I’ve heard that from many sources over the years.
Actually, it originated in Joe’s Bar in Poughkeepsie in 1973, when patrol Don Aires was deep in his cups and bragging to barman Joe Slayman about the size of his genitalia and what he intended to do with his wife later that night. Joe rolled his eyes and told Don, “Well, why don’t you just give 'er the whole nine yards.” The other patrons were amused and the phrase caught on from there.
Really, I wasn’t looking for a serious discussion, but for silly made-up explanations. Sorry to bother you on your quest for truth.
Okay, here’s my totally-made-up-as-I-type WAG: On a military base somewhere, a golf course was reserved for officers. The longest hole, the dreaded ninth, measured a whopping 630 yards from tee to pin. So when a general or colonel gave orders to enlisted men and wanted to stress the necessity of giving maximum possible effort, the officer would say: “And so, men, don’t just give it the Hole Five yards (385, in case you’re wondering) or the Hole Eighteen yards (425), but the Hole Nine yards!”
> I’m pretty sure it is exactly what Unka Cecil says. A full bolt of cloth is nine
> yards. In the old west women had rare oportunities to buy cloth so if they could
> affor it, the bought “the whole nine yards.”
Unka Cecil said no such thing. Why would you claim that he did? He may have mentioned this theory at some point, but only because he wanted to debunk it.
When I first heard the phrase it didn’t mean giving something your all but rather not giving your all. My 5th grade football coach used the phrase, “Boy you went the whole nine yards that time.” when he felt you didn’t do enough.
Since, you know, you need to go ten yards in football to get a first down.