Another basic problem is relying on someone’s memory of what he heard fifty years before. I know people don’t like to be told this, but no one’s memory is as good as they think it is. People are always conflating memories, forgetting events, or remembering things that didn’t happen. (Yes, really. Really. This is always happening in threads on the SDMB. People are always slightly screwing up anything that they haven’t just looked up.) Just the other day, a friend and I argued about whether I lent him a course on tape ten years ago. I have a clear memory of doing it, while he has a clear memory of never having listened to a course on tape. And we both have generally good memories. It’s too easy for Stratton to have inserted “the whole nine yards” into a joke he heard fifty years before. Fixing up a joke heard long ago with phrases acquired more recently is very easy to do.
Incidentally, the idea of a default hypothesis is ridiculous. There are a dozen theories to explain the origin of “the whole nine yards,” none of them impossible, none of them with any citation from the time when the phrase supposedly originated. None of them can be considered to be the default hypothesis, just another vaguely possible theory.
To me, the joke seems exactly like the sort of thing that someone would cobble together around an already-existing phrase or punchline. It reads almost exactly like one of those fake acronym-based etymologies - it just makes hardly any sense when considered all on its own.
But “nine yards” just might be essential to the joke if it’s riffing off the notion that nine yards is the amount of fabric in a well-tailored suit / full Scottish kilt / royal bridal veil, etc. It’s not just a random number, or so it would seem. So the joke takes a pre-existing “nine yards” idea, packages it with the “the whole …” articulation to give it a zing, implants a naughty subtext, and places it in the middle of the air force in the 1950s where it snowballs into the phrase.
Are you saying Stratton concocted the joke recently to advance a fake etymology? That’s possible of course, but it’s important to remember that Popik sought out Stratton. It’s not like Stratton is self-promoting this etymology.
Or are you saying that Stratton received the joke in 1950s but that “the whole nine yards” was a pre-existing phrase that was dropped into that joke? If so, where are the written attestations pre-1950s?
In any event, Stratton purports to be transcribing a text, so it would be nice to see a scanned image of the text itself to judge its authenticity.
Firstly the joke isn’t talking about fabric, which is sold in square yards. It’s talking about a length of knitted wool, which is 9 yards long but presumably only a few inches wide. IOW it would only be the equivalent of about 1/100th of the the amount of fabric in a well-tailored suit.
Secondly the explanation requires that all air force cadets in 1955 would know that a suit required 9 yards of fabric, as well as every single person they told the joke to. Since those people would mostly have been single, blue collar men this is unlikely. Moreover if this was such common knowledge then it almost certainly would be the origin of the phrase itself. It would also leave numerous written references.
Barring some corroborating evidence it seems like a fairly weak explanation.
That right there is the crux of the problem with this story - it assumes that the “nine yards” idea already existed as a common meme, and we have no hints that this was true.
I think he’s suggesting that someone honestly conflated later events into an old story, not that he intentionally concocted it to deceive.
The joke as told here does seem to depend on its being a pre-existing phrase, and an extremely common one if the joke was to be funny to large numbers of people. If that’s so, then where are references before the joke? That’s the problem.
I’ve lurked on these boards for a long time and always been fascinated by the debate around the “whole nine yards”.
Using Google Books, is seems the “whole nine yards” cites have been found, but a couple uses for “full nine yards” used in the same context appear to be even earlier.
I don’t think either of those cites are as old as Google Books implies. Magazines (like Business Week) are dated with (what I think is) the date of the first issue the library owns. I’m not sure of the date on the issue you linked to, but I doubt it’s 1942 (looking up “Richard G Unruh” implies a later date).
And your first link refers to “wireless mikes” on the same page as it has “full nine yards,” so again I doubt it was actually published in 1958.
I can confirm that a 400 round belt of 50-cal ammo is ~ 27 feet/9 yds long (I physically measured a shorter section and extrapolated). This was one of the common lengths used in WW2 US fighters. I doubt that this has any connection to the origin of the phrase, however, as belt length appears to have been pretty much universally referenced by count, not by length.
I don’t think this is correct. Fabric is usually sold in linear yards off the bolt - often, but not by any means always, the fabric will be a yard wide, so the purchased measure is coincidentally also a square yard, but if it’s 60 or 30 inches wide, it’s still sold by the linear yard.
(Actually, it’s by the metre here now, but still a linear measure)
I’m saying neither - just that it reads awkwardly in the same way as would a story that was concocted for the specific purpose of including this punchline. Nothing more than my opinion.
“Alligator Alley” was published in 2002, written by a man who was born in 1954.
I have no direct knowledge of that issue of Business Week, but the magazine was founded in 1929; if that is, indeed, a snippet from the block of issues 3542-3550 of a weekly magazine, then it was published in the late '90s, which is consistent with the career of Richard Unruh
If it’s less than a yard wide then it’s going to take more than 9 years to make a kilt/suit/veil that requires 9 X 1yd X 1yd lengths. So that alone kills the joke.
Even at 30 inches, 9 yards of fabric is much, much more than 9 yards of a scarf, which will be, what, 6 inches wide at most? Which once again kills the joke.
IOW the joke can’t possibly be playing off the comparison to the 9 yards of material in a suit/kilt/veil.
And quite frankly a 9 yard long penis is so ridiculous that the joke loses all impact. It would be funnier without that length being mentioned because it is so preposterous. It would be like the tiny pianist joke using 9 yards as the figure.
A quick google revealed a more interesting find, “The Phrase Finder” found a reference for “to the nines” that dated back to 1719. They claim victory, and I’m inclined to give it to them, the story holds together well.
Their work on “whole nine yards” is stuck at 1964. They argue strongly against cement trucks (too small at the time) and claim that the phrase wasn’t widely spread in 1961. (An athlete broke a record by jumping 27 feet and no newspaper used that magic phrase in a headline.)
Lots of great answers, but unless I missed it, all wrong. The actual origin of the phrase " whole nine yards" is actually related to fabric and tailoring, but very specific. It is the traditional amount of material used in creating the Pope’s ceremonial vestment. While I am not certain if this still remains the standard, it was indeed the tradition, and the origin of the phrase.
