Yes, it’s been impossible to determine whether that “nine yards” in the 1850 text is de novo usage, introduced into this exchange by this particular author, or whether the “nine yards” within quotation marks within his letter had actually appeared in the letter to which he was replying. (So, was he simply quoting what the other fellow had written?) The newspaper issues that would’ve held the other fellow’s part of the conversation no longer seem to exist, so we’re left with this one-sided argument.
Yes, lots of other-numbered searches, with not much luck, except the mysterious 1882 example (“three”) and that strange 1930 example (“ten”). You sometimes find “the whole seven yards” starting in the 1970s, but it’s hard to know if these are simply instances of folks getting the idiom “wrong” (mistakenly substituting “seven” for “nine”) or whether a “seven”-based form is far older (than the 1970s), but not much recorded in newspapers or letters or whatnot.
Anyway, my gut tells me that for turn-of-the-century Americans “six [yards]” and “nine [yards]” simultaneously held some significance, with the latter winning out for the idiom as the century progressed. Whether “phrase inflation” accounts for the shift, I don’t know.
I went back to newspapers.com and found one long letter published by Edwin Draper, on p. 2 of the November 18 issue. His earlier letters seem to have been published under the pseudonym “Common Sense,” even though everybody knew who he was, since the matter originated in a town council meeting. He’s attacking W. K. Kennedy, the Mayor of Louisiana, in Pike County MO. (I don’t know where I got W. W. Wallace from.) The paper is bannered Louisiana, Pike County, Missouri, which is why searching for Bowling Green, MO doesn’t work. The letter takes up almost three full columns of small type, which certainty led to the mocking of it being the “nine yards” of whatever.
Kennedy’s first letter appeared in the Monday, Sept. 23 issue and refers to a letter from “‘Common Sense,’ alias ‘Old Ball,’ alias Edwin Draper,” published on Sept. 20, a Friday. No Friday papers appear in the database in 1850, except for August 9. Almost all the others are Mondays, although the first papers in October, November, and December are Wednesdays. Whether that indicates an irregular or semi-weekly publishing schedule isn’t obvious. The Library of Congress entry, which also shows a transfer of publication from Bowling Green to Louisiana in 1846, calls it a weekly, but that needs to apply to decades of publication under various names.
Draper could have had another letter published between Nov. 18 and Dec. 4, but that would require a return letter from Kennedy as well and there doesn’t seem to be time for that. I’d say that his epic response on the 18th was surely what the “nine yards” mocked.
Another “whole:” The whole schmear. I found a reference in 1904, but it seems to have taken off during the 1940s.
Just going back to what the author of the article way above mentioned, that once you say “the whole,” it doesn’t really matter what follows.
What was “schmear”, in 1904? I assume it wasn’t softened cream cheese.
From what I gather it was, indeed, the Yiddish word for cheese spread with its origin in the word for butter (smør) in some German dialects. From there, slang uses were found for the word, like a small bonus to sweeten a deal.
Huh, I remember the word seemingly appearing out of nowhere, in the past couple of decades or so. I guess it just took a while for bagel culture to make its way to Cleveland.
That’s interesting. Merriam-Webster online has it as 1909, with a slightly different meaning of a collection of related things. I wonder if you have found an earlier usage of the word than etymological dictionaries have. I don’t have access to OED, so I don’t know if that has an earlier one.
The origin I see comes from German meaning “to smear,” though there is a cognate that means butter in some dialects.
Complete article from “The Kentucky Post”, June 11, 1904:
Police and Fire Commissioner Jim O’Dowd gave his ‘stein shower’ Friday night at his home in Lewisburg, Covington, and it was largely attended by his friends.
His home was artistically decorated with lanterns, and the brass band and the Schnapps Band furnished sweet melody. Dowdmeier looked perfectly lovely in a black velvet coat, and showed himself a most capable host.
He was simply deluged with steins, receiving about 100 of different sizes and varieties. There were big steins and little steins, tall steins and short steins. And one stein, that Joe Coyle sent, had a music box arrangement that would make a man think he had wheels in his head every time he took a drink.
Jim’s rathskeller was crowded and the flowing bowl passed freely. The whole schmear was there, and everybody had a lovely time.
When I was in my early twenties in the mid eighties in Calgary, there was a Deli in a hip neighborhood that my girlfriend and I would go to after catching a movie at the art house down the road.
I had to ask what lox was. Actually had to ask what cappuccino was too. I knew what a bagel was. I was young and ignorant so maybe I just didn’t know but Calgary was pretty unapolitan back then. Still not a whole lot of places to get a really good lox and cream cheese bagel in town.
The OED also has 1909 as their earliest quote for “the whole schmear”. It’s interesting that that is the earliest cited meaning of “schmear”. The earliest quote for the “cream cheese” meaning is 1914, and there’s another meaning that I’ve never encountered: “a bribe; bribery, corruption” first quoted from 1950.
So we have an earlier citation? How sure are we of the date on the 1904 cite? Wouldn’t this be worth passing on to the OED?
It should be noted that the OED also lists a verb “schmear”, with two meanings: “to spread a substance on” (earliest quotation 1882) and “to flatter or ingratiate oneself with” (earliest quotation 1910). The noun must have been derived from the earlier verb.
I grew up in a non-bagel area. To me, “schmear” was playing a card worth points on your partner’s trick in Pinochle. Kinda fits in with the definition - “spread” the wealth.
I think the OED is the wrong place to be looking. It’s almost certainly a word brought into the Anglosphere by immigrants from Central Europe much earlier than it’s first use in published English.
That’s irrelevant to me for this. I’m interested in the first written documentation of the word in English. It’s clear it came from Yiddish.
You don’t think that it’s relevant that “the whole schmear” was likely based on the cream cheese meaning even though that use doesn’t show up in English publications until five years later?
It seems unclear the extent to which Yiddish and German borrowed from each other. The modern german word “schmieren” means lubricate, and its origins go back as far middle high German. Which does not rule out that it came from some sort Yiddish dialect centuries ago, but it also seems possible that it migrated in the other direction. Surely Y[ddish has plenty of PIE roots in it, given the general region.
As far as “schmieren”->“schmear”, the other meaning mentioned above make sense: bribery does align well with lubrication.
I’m not understanding what you’re asking. I’m interested in the first appearance of “schmear” in English print, that’s all.