# the whole nine yards **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [February 5, 2010, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852 "2010-02-05T21:40:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![shuffledigfoot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c6cbf5/32.png) [@shuffledigfoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shuffledigfoot)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/1 "2010-02-05T21:40:59Z")
I was speaking to a friend’s father who was in the US Army Air Force during WWII. As a gunner of 50cal. machine guns, the ammo was in belts of twenty seven feet (about 350 rounds) or nine yards. When firing the whole belt and hit or missed a target the expression was “I gave it the whole nine yards!”. Can anyone historically verify the number of rounds and length of the belt of a 50cal. in aircraft to anti- air defense? ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/2 "2010-02-05T21:45:45Z")
Moved ATMB -\> GQ. - **xash** Administrator ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/3 "2010-02-05T21:46:58Z")
This might be of interest: > **[What’s the origin of “the whole nine yards”?](https://www.straightdope.com/21341689/what-s-the-origin-of-the-whole-nine-yards)** ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/4 "2010-02-05T21:55:52Z")
With apologies to **shuffledigfoot** , I’ve moved this to _Comments on Cecil’s Columns_. **xash** already has provided a link to Cecil’s original column. I’d be surprised if this column hasn’t generated the most interest of all of them. We’ve probably had 20+ threads in the last 11 years concerning the matter. I’ll try to provide a link to one that specifically addresses the ammo belt question. Bottom line is–there’s no way this phrase goes back to WWII. It just doesn’t. We’ve got it back to about 1960(and this only in the last 2-3 years). ---
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/5 "2010-02-05T22:20:30Z")
Yeah, this comes up often, and this ammo belt length “explanation” shows up a lot. Here’s the [most recent](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=542640), from December. Post 4 there gives links to a bunch of previous threads. I’ll just quote it here for convenience. > [@Whole (Full) Nine Yards ?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-full-nine-yards/520100/4): > > I was going to try to post links to all the threads we’ve had about this in the past, but it’s a bit daunting. This is, shall we say, one of the Great Questions of the SDMB. > > Instead, I’ll just give you the most recent 5 threads. The fifth one has an excellent set of links in the second post to many more discussions here. > > [The Whole Nine Yards - from Vietnam?? - Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=532360) > > [did the whole nine yards issue ever get resolved - Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=166516) > > [Whole nine yards (again) - Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=460533) > > [The Whole Nine Yards - Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=425744) > > [The whole TEN yards! - Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=353458) > > As of now, I believe the earliest reference in print of this phrase is the one discovered by our own **samclem** , which is referenced in the OP of the third link above. It is from 1964, which makes the kilt theory implausible. > > Sam’s discovery includes not just the phrase in print, but a definition. It is stated to be space-program slang for a line-by-line report on a project. ---
**Author:** ![Tierce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea5d25/32.png) [@Tierce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tierce)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2010, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/6 "2010-02-06T03:03:33Z")
Anything that helps keep the phrase “Doom Pussy” from dying out of the lexicon can’t be all bad. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/7 "2010-02-07T03:17:24Z")
I don’t know if this explanation is in any of the above links, but [Michael Quinion at his wonderful WorldWideWords site](http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/nineyards.htm) believes the phrase may have originated around 1955 (in an off-colour joke). ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/8 "2010-02-07T05:56:47Z")
That story contradicts itself rather amusingly in the first paragraph. > [@](#): > > There are some queries that we answerers of questions on the story of the English language get asked more often than others. “What is the third word ending in gry?” has come top of the list **by a good margin**. But “Where does the whole nine yards come from?” **runs it a close second**. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/9 "2010-02-07T08:01:59Z")
I’ve read it several times and I don’t see where the contradiction is. Please explain. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/10 "2010-02-07T08:20:52Z")
“good margin” “close second” ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/11 "2010-02-07T12:34:19Z")
shuffledigfoot, let’s summarize in order to give you the answer to your question. No, the phrase “the whole nine yards” doesn’t come from the length of an ammunition belt in World War II. No one knows where the phrase originated. There are no known written references to it until the 1960’s and not very many even then. There are seven known written references to it between 1962 and 1967. There are some claims from people that they heard it earlier, but memory is a tricky thing. In each of these memories, it’s possible that they are unconsciously inserting a reference to “the whole nine yards” into a story that they are remembering from several decades before. The phrase didn’t really become popular until the 1970’s. Some of the written references to “the whole nine yards” from the mid-1960’s seem to come from sources more or less related to the U.S. Air Force. I suspect that what happened was that someone in the Air Force heard the phrase “the whole nine yards” and decided to make a joke about it originating as a reference to the length of ammunition belts in World War II. Other people in the Air Force heard him talking about it and didn’t realize that it was a joke, so they spread the story. Incidentally, the origin of this phrase has been studied an enormous amount. In saying that only seven written references to it between 1962 and 1967 have been found, I should make it clear that this is despite the fact that with the increased power of computer searches, it is a lot easier to search even obscure written material from that time. The origin of “the whole nine yards” is probably the single greatest open problem in the etymology of American English. Anyone who solves it will win the Nobel Prize in Etymology.\* \*Well, O.K., you can’t win a Nobel Prize in Etymology because there isn’t one, but that’s only because Alfred Nobel’s wife had an affair with an etymologist, so he cancelled his plans to create a Noble Prize in that field. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/12 "2010-02-07T17:08:27Z")
I wish people would stop saying “it doesn’t come from \.” If we don’t know where it came from, we can’t say that it **didn’t** come from anything occuring prior to the references we do know about. We can say, “there is no evidence that that is the explanation, and we consider it unlikely to be the correct one because …” ---
**Author:** ![Rillian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bcef8e/32.png) [@Rillian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rillian)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/13 "2010-12-17T15:05:11Z")
I tried out the new Google Books Ngram Viewer tool using the phrase “the whole nine yards”. The results support a 1960s era origin for the phrase. [Search results](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=the+whole+nine+yards&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/14 "2010-12-17T15:40:20Z")
Wow, what a great tool! Thanks for sharing that. I hadn’t heard of it before. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/15 "2010-12-17T15:54:37Z")
> [@Rillian](#): > > I tried out the new Google Books Ngram Viewer tool using the phrase “the whole nine yards”. The results support a 1960s era origin for the phrase. > > [Search results](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=the+whole+nine+yards&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3) You should have checked back before 1900. [1700-1730.](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=the+whole+nine+yards&year_start=1700&year_end=1730&corpus=0&smoothing=3) ---
**Author:** ![fjs1fs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9e8a1a/32.png) [@fjs1fs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fjs1fs)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/16 "2010-12-17T18:16:32Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > I’ve read it several times and I don’t see where the contradiction is. Please explain. GOOD MARGIN vs. CLOSE SECOND is the contradiction. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/17 "2010-12-17T18:47:41Z")
> [@Rillian](#): > > I tried out the new Google Books Ngram Viewer tool using the phrase “the whole nine yards”. The results support a 1960s era origin for the phrase. > > [Search results](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=the+whole+nine+yards&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3) The earliest result I see there is from 1960, in “Reference Quarterly”; it appears to be a journal published by the Reference Services Division of the American Library Association. Any librarians with access to back issues? > [@Czarcasm](#): > > You should have checked back before 1900. [1700-1730.](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=the+whole+nine+yards&year_start=1700&year_end=1730&corpus=0&smoothing=3) “No results found.” Yeah, that was illuminating. ---
**Author:** ![Randy\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee7513/32.png) [@Randy\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randy_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/18 "2010-12-17T19:10:24Z")
I don’t remember if I’ve posted this before in one of the other similar threads, but what the hell. My grandfather was in the Army Air Corps in WWII, and always insisted on the ammo belt theory. I absolutely believed him until I came here, and eventually found Cecil’s column. Alas, by then it was too late to tell him he misremembered. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2010, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/19 "2010-12-18T02:25:46Z")
> [@Nametag](#): > > The earliest result I see there is from 1960, in “Reference Quarterly”; it appears to be a journal published by the Reference Services Division of the American Library Association. Any librarians with access to back issues? > > “No results found.” Yeah, that was illuminating. The ngram tool says it’s there, but an actual text search finds only a few cases that have the individual words, “the”, “whole” “nine”, and “yards”. I suspect ngram may not understand that, when search cannot find a phrase at all, it backs off to the “all the words in any order” case. ---
**Author:** ![Cayuga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2010, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852/20 "2010-12-21T22:19:24Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > I wish people would stop saying “it doesn’t come from \.” If we don’t know where it came from, we can’t say that it **didn’t** come from anything occuring prior to the references we do know about. We can say, “there is no evidence that that is the explanation, and we consider it unlikely to be the correct one because …” On the other hand, if the story du jour is “It comes from the [something] industry, where an entire [object] uses 9 yards of [material],” and the fact is that an entire [object] only uses 2 yards of [material], I think it’s fair to stay that the story du jour is false. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-whole-nine-yards/527852.md?page=2)