Whole Nine Yards

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mark from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

What are you doing in Winston-Salem?

I’m a pediatrician.

Oh, wow.

And a word nerd, too.

Excellent. Great combination.

One of our people.

Well, I’ve got a question that I thought had been answered years ago, and just recently I found something new that confused me.

The whole nine yards.

Oh, boy.

Well, I’d always liked the idea that there were nine cubic yards of concrete in a cement mixer, and that a fancy ball gown would take nine square yards of material. And then I heard that nine sails on a square-rigged ship, or hanging off the horizontal yards, would make a whole nine yards. So I like those explanations. And recently I was reading a historical magazine. They’re talking about the D-Day invasion, and they said that Eisenhower visiting the troops before they launched the invasion, the heavy bombers had machine gun ammunition in 27-foot-long belts, and they called it the whole nine yards of ammunition.

What gives?

You know, the whole nine yards is, I would say it’s the Moby Dick of etymology. And all these etymologists, and now you, Mark, are searching far and wide, and the answer to this question remains deep below the briny depths of the English language.

But your skepticism is very well placed, Mark, because that theory about the whole nine yards coming from nine yards of ammunition has been debunked in a number of places.

A person who does a good job of that is Dave Wilton at wordorigins.org. For one thing, they never measured ammunition that way. You know, you measured it in terms of rounds.

And one of the really exciting developments in this field came a couple of years ago when a researcher found a newspaper article from the 1970s where a returning prisoner of war from Vietnam mentioned the phrase the whole nine yards or all nine yards or something like that. And this researcher, Barry Poppick, who’s one of the most dogged etymologists out there, actually tracked down this former POW to ask him about his understanding of that term.

And he said he’d heard it during flight school in the 1950s.

Aha. That actually jibes very well with what we already know about the term, doesn’t it?

Yeah.

Because a lot of the, as I remember, a lot of the early uses we can find with this term in print, all of them from after 1960 are related to the Air Force or some kind of flying, right?

Right. Right. And Mark, have you heard the one about the Scotsman and his kilt?

No.

Okay. Well, it’s probably just as well because it’s a filthy joke and that’s involving nine yards. We probably can’t talk about it on the air.

Maybe we could put a link to it on our website because Barry Poppik has it on his site. But anyway, this is the story that the returning prisoner of war told Barry Poppik, that there’s sort of a naughty story involving a Scotsman and his kilt and nine yards.

So we may be closing in on the answer, but we’re not sure.

There’s a second story to that, Mark.

Last fall, somebody found the earliest use so far known of the term in print, and people are often surprised to find that it’s 1962 and was in a car magazine, and it didn’t have anything to do with Scotsman or kilts or airplanes or anything like that. It’s just a pretty straightforward use of the term.

But as we always say, or I often say on the show, this is still an orig ankh. All these theories are unproven.

Yeah.

Well, I tell you what, Mark, if you do find the answer, let us know, because you will be greeted as visiting royalty among the linguistic world.

Oh, good.

Hey, Mark, this was a lot of fun. Thanks.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mark. Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye now.

If you’ve got a question about the origins of, well, one of the classic stumpers of all time, by all means, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And that discussion forum I keep mentioning is at waywordradio.org/discussion.