The whole Nine Yards

But actually comes from American Football where the last nine yards before the End Zone are recognised as the most difficult to traverse with your four downs. So the whole nine yards is to provide maximum effort against maximum adversity or to put it another way give it everything you’ve got.

Anne (being a bit pedantic)

That’s where I heard the term originated and I think that American football predates belted ammunition by a good few years. American football actaully came about because the Americans couldn’t master rugby 😀

The way the Admiral used the word is an obscure but correct usage. The dictionary says it may be primarily Scotch in usage (or Scots in more modern terms).

It’s use in the USA in not unexpected though. It is odd how words and phrases suddenly shift. I was brought up with a clear understanding of the Scots word “Minging” as being very specifically something with a nasty, bad smell – fish that’s gone off, that type of thing. Then suddenly it re-emerged in in SE England with a much broader meaning as anything bad, poor quality.

Sorry Bob, should have warned you not to read the above. Etymology, however popular with Guardian readers and Radio 4 listeners, is never going to be exciting.

AllanK

I’ve never encountered “Minging”, but I’ve met a few “Mingers”….

10……

…assuming it was fitted with the G45 (which I believe the RAF Mustang I/II/III etc were fitted with).

Of course not being a world expert on all things gun camerary I am willing to be corrected…

Ahh, but now I will forever be wondering if that was the full nine yards that Chalky White just gave that 190 over France or if it was just a short burst……..

Thanks, Allan,
One lives and learns.

Bored of this now………

Back to the excitement of camera-gun-film-cataloguing for you, then, and don’t come back until you are done. 😀

I’d expect the Admiral to have said ‘all the nine yards’, perhaps, being more precise (the nine yards are not a ‘whole’ but a ‘set’ at best) but that doesn’t help proving it one way or another.

The way the Admiral used the word is an obscure but correct usage. The dictionary says it may be primarily Scotch in usage (or Scots in more modern terms).

It’s use in the USA in not unexpected though. It is odd how words and phrases suddenly shift. I was brought up with a clear understanding of the Scots word “Minging” as being very specifically something with a nasty, bad smell – fish that’s gone off, that type of thing. Then suddenly it re-emerged in in SE England with a much broader meaning as anything bad, poor quality.

Bored of this now………

Sorry Bob, should have warned you not to read the above. Etymology, however popular with Guardian readers and Radio 4 listeners, is never going to be exciting.

AllanK

Bored of this now………

Is this a replacement for The whole nine yards 😮

Bored of this now………

Lots of detail there Badger. I think the 1942 reference (incidentally discussed in a couple of the earlier links provided) breaks on the need for it to be regarded as hyperbole when stated by Admiral Land, highly unlikely in the context, or that others used it as an example of hyperbole from his use of the phrase – but in the latter case, accept that it does not appear documented anywhere until the 1960s. Highly improbable, IMHO, which is why I didn’t mention it earlier.

I’d expect the Admiral to have said ‘all the nine yards’, perhaps, being more precise (the nine yards are not a ‘whole’ but a ‘set’ at best) but that doesn’t help proving it one way or another.

The English Vampire test applies again – “English people don’t like garlic. Vampires don’t like garlic. Therefore all vampires are English.” False logic.

And yeah, I’m very uncharitable when it comes to stuff people want to believe. We need more, not less scepticism of comfortable bull, IMHO. But each to their own! 😉

Regards,

The earliest identified use of the exact phrase dates from 1942, in the Investigation of the National Defense Program: Hearings Before a Special Committee Investigating the National Defense Program,[1] by Admiral Emory Scott Land, who said “You have to increase from 7.72 to 12 for the average at the bottom of that fifth column, for the whole nine yards”. This use refers to the total output statistics for the nine new shipyards that produced “Liberty Ships” with unprecedented speed, crucial to the course of World War II. It is thus far undetermined whether this literal use gave rise to the transferred, metaphorical, figurative sense.

[1] http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0707B&L=ADS-L&P=R7303&D=0&I=-3

Subject: Re: “the whole nine yards” 1942
From: Stephen Goranson <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: American Dialect Society <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 06:39:47 -0400
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments: text/plain (93 lines)

Admiral Emory Scott Land was appointed by FDR soon after the Pearl
Harbor attack to oversee a massive increase in U.S. shipbuilding. In his long
life (1879-1971) Land was, among other things, a naval architect and
administrator, a submarine builder, a pilot and president of the Air Transport
Association of America, and a director and consultant to General Dynamics, a
defense contractor and a supplier to NASA (where a 1964 usage of “the whole
nine yards” was recently announced). The Library of Congress published in 1958
a “Register of His Papers” deposited there. Land was on the cover of Time
magazine on March 31, 1941, before Pearl Harbor and before his April, 1942
Senate testimony in which he spoke the words “the whole nine yards.”

Three of the options regarding those latter words, ending a sentence or
list, as they often do, are the following: (1) the words are a coincidental
collocation, having nothing whatever to do with the later popular quotation;
(2) he was quoting popular words; and (3) the words gave rise to the saying.

(1) These words, despite many and sustained searches, have not been
found (to my knowledge) earlier than 1942. So they are a fairly rare combination
of words. All other (known) uses of these words appear to be related to one
another. Note that these words appear in Defense appropriation hearings, in the
U.S. Senate, where they would reappear, though years later, at least possibly
sustained in memory there by slang oral tradition. Recall that many, for some
reason, insist that the phrase goes back to World War II times.

(2) In context, the dialog appears as quite serious business and devoid of
word-play or double meanings. And, again, the phrase is not (yet) known beforw
1942, to be quoted, anyway. Note that the huge increase in shipbuilding,
including at new yards set up by Kaiser on the west coast, was quite an
ambitious goal, and to achieve that goal at “the whole nine yards” would be a
remarkable achievement, seen as urgent to the war effort.

(3) The words in 1942 are a straightforward response to a question.
They do not seem to be intended to be artful, but they were emphatic, and spoken
by a much-respected authority. They report that if several items are achieved,
the ensemble whould require the full compliment of extraordinary contributions
by “the whole nine yards.” This sets up the pattern: item, item, item–the
whole nine yards. Even by speakers, later, who were unaware what type of
“yards” were originally intended. I suggest that the possibility that April 23,
1942 was the birth of “the whole nine yards” is well worth considering and
testing by further research.

Stephen Goranson

> Investigation of the National Defense Program: Hearings Before a Special
> Committee Investigating the National Defense Program, By United
> States Congress.
> Senate. Special Committee Investigating the National Defense Program,
> part 12,
> U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington,1942, page 5192.
> (Google Books provided the title and page number but gave no text; WorldCat
> indicated the page was in pt. 12; the rest is from the paper publication.)
>
> Senators and Admirals on Thursday April 23, 1942 were discussing a rapid
> increase in construction of Liberty ships. Senator Harry S. Truman was
> chairman.
>
> [page 5191]
> ….
> Senator [Harold H.] BURTON….therefore you see a possibility of actually
> increasing the
> percentage of gain by 50 percent in these yards as a whole.
> Admiral [Howard L.] VICKERY. In the yards as a whole.
> Senator BURTON. And the yards that are below 12 percent now there
> would be more
> than a 50-percent gain because they are below that average at this time?
> [page 5292]
> Admiral VICKERY. Yes, sir.
> Senator BURTON. So that you have involved here a tremendous expansion in
> production, and you are shooting for a 50-percent increase or more than a
> 50-percent increase in seven out of nine plants.
> Admiral VICKERY. That is right, and they have got to make that to hit the
> schedules.
> Admiral [Emory S.] LAND. You have to increase from 7.72 to 12 for the
> average at
> the bottom of that fifth column, for the whole nine yards.
> Senator BURTON. That is pretty nearly twice.
> Admiral VICKERY. That is what we have got to do.
> Admiral LAND. That is what we are up against here, and they aren’t up against
> anything that the rest of the United States and all its armed forces are up
> against.

Of course, the next known use in print is in 1962*, after which it appears frequently in the US military and NASA.

The prevalence of stories of individuals having heard it used before 1962 does indicate that the documented 1942 use of the term in a serious, non-metaphorical context may have been the genesis of the double-meaning.

*These are a short story in the literary magazine Michigan’s Voices; and (as “all nine yards of goodies”) in a letter in the auto magazine Car Life.

With great respect (and I mean that quite sincerely, folks!) Eric Partridge is NOT the be-all, and end-all, of English usage (in whatever format!).

I’d be interested in who you might point to as more reliable on military slang – pre – 1950. I’m not suggesting Partridge is either infallible or entirely comprehensive – however the remark is absent, and that is negative evidence.

What is needed is for some expert on the Vickers water-cooled machine gun (of WW1 vintage) to tell us how long the ammo belt was for that particular weapon!

Indeed, as I asked. However that does not ‘prove’ the story. (And conversely it it turns out to be six yards long that does not ‘disprove’ the story, but it would add to the negative evidence.) Evidence of the use of the phrase – by a Vickers gunner or a Great War ‘user’ – not status of a referee is what is needed. A recording, note or other, ideally contemporary item, or at least a closer use to the time. A phrase coined pre-1918 being revealed in print for the first time in 1964, on the other side of the Atlantic? It simply doesn’t match normal language features – and remember there’s no taboo element (profanity) to slow its revelation in general society.

We now have more than three references by posters to researches on language who all, consistently, say ‘no proven origin’.

Myth busted, evidence welcome.

Regards,

The general usage was mainly American and I came across it frequently in 1960’s and 70’s when regularly visiting the US. It always seemed to have a sporting connection with American Football, but as I pointed out to them, they measure the plays in yardages of multiples of 10!!
I believe it is connected to the length of ammunition belts in B17’s (waist guns? where it wasn’t done to expend all your ammunition blazing away at one target, as then you would have given “everything” and have nothing left for anything else coming your way.

I have not, however, had the pleasure or opportunity to examine any B17’s or other aircraft or Vietnam era helicopter gunships, as to the actual length of the ammunition belts.

Who has conclusive proof?

If you go to the site below all will be revealed!

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-whole-nine-yards.html

Ray
Sqdrn. L/Scramble beat me to it.

If you had your privates wrapped up in 9 yards of tartan, would you unwrap them ,in order to give the cloth to your enemy? for what it’s worth I thought that the phrase was attributable to B17 gunners.

What is needed is for some expert on the Vickers water-cooled machine gun (of WW1 vintage) to tell us how long the ammo belt was for that particular weapon!

Ok, but that will only prove that it is feasible – not that it is the correct origin. If the length of tartan needed to make a kilt is also nine yards then which version do we go with?

I suppose we are going to have to present it to the court of all things written, the committee at the Oxford English Dictionary for whether or not it is allowed….”

The OED (or if it is American in origin perhaps Websters?) will be the best solution thanks to the way they seek out first usage of words and phrases.

I have a full set of Oxford English Dictionaries (First edition updated to 1933) and there is no mention at all of the phrase. If it had come into common usage during WWI then it would have been in that dictionary.

Is anybody able to check it in the current edition OED (post 1964) or US equivalent?

AllanK

Have also heard of it being attributed to the length of the bomb bay of a Vickers Wellington ….

With great respect (and I mean that quite sincerely, folks!) Eric Partridge is NOT the be-all, and end-all, of English usage (in whatever format!).
What is needed is for some expert on the Vickers water-cooled machine gun (of WW1 vintage) to tell us how long the ammo belt was for that particular weapon!
Whilst I almost venerate JDK’s writings, he’s gone off at a tangent on this one (and been uncharacteristically uncharitable!)
What we need is an Army Tech Ref for the length of the WW1 ammo belt, NOT the writings of some scribe, however well received he may have been in later years!
Moggy, what were you up to???????
HTH
Resmoroh

I don’t think any of his posts have ever exceeded a foot in length let alone nine full yards :p

I suppose we are going to have to present it to the court of all things written, the committee at the Oxford English Dictionary for whether or not it is allowed….

This throws up the BBC series Balderdash & Piffle – http://www.oed.com/bbcwordhunt/

A quick check of the OED – “the whole nine yards (informal, chiefly N. Amer.) everything possible or available.”

😮 😮 😮 😮 😮

Seconded!

…JDK’s full length erudite post…

😮 😮 😮 😮 😮