Wordorigins.org

[Updated on 21 June 2007 with addition of 1964 citation.]

First, it needs to be stated up front that no one knows what the origin of the phrase the whole nine yards is. Anyone who claims to have such knowledge is almost assuredly wrong. We just don’t know what the nine yards refers to. There are probably more unsubstantiated explanations floating about for this phrase than for any other and most have absolutely no evidence to support them.

Also, the phrase is much more recent than you probably think. It only dates back to the mid-1960s. The earliest known use of the phrase is from the San Antonio Express and News of 18 April 1964 in an article about slang in the US space program:

“Give ‘em the whole nine yards” means an item-by-item report on any project.

The gloss here is rather specific, but it’s obvious that this is the same phrase. One might think that the original reference would be to nine yards of paper, but it’s more likely that the phrase was in figurative use before this and this example is just a specific application of the more general term.

It also appears in Elaine Shepard’s 1967 The Doom Pussy, a book about US Air Force pilots in Vietnam. In the book, the phrase is a favorite of Major “Smash” Crandell:

The story began when he had absent-mindedly gone through a wedding ceremony a couple of years before while snockered one Saturday night in San Francisco. Slipping out of the knot was expensive but Smash was eventually able to untangle what he called “the whole nine yards.”

And there is this description of a barber shop in Danang:

Most Americans enjoyed getting the full nine yards that is included in the French barber’s repertoire.
Smash was in the front chair. A barber had given him a trim, shampoo, and shave, massaged him from waist to ears, then trapped his stubborn curls under a hairnet to keep them pasted flat while they dried.
“What’s the hell’s that on your head, Smash?” Nails asked.
“That’s the gahdam ninth yard,” shot back Smash, grinning.

Later in the book, Smash says (in reference to a letter from a paramour who was offering him sex in all the rooms of her house at any time of day when he returned from Vietnam):

God. The first thing in the early pearly morning and the last thing at night. Beds all over the gahdam house. The whole nine yards.

A military origin, especially a US Air Force origin, seems to be a likely possibility as most of the early citations of the phrase are from military sources. (Including the first, since NASA and the Air Force are very closely associated.) This one is from an army source in the 13 November 1967 issue of Pacific Stars and Stripes:

Spec. 4 Robert G. Helton, 64th Quartermaster Btn.—"Ann Margaret—all the way. She’s got everything going for her. She dances, sings, acts—the whole nine yards.”

And the Fort Walton Beach, Florida Playground Daily News of 28 April 1969 contains a classified ad for a home that reads:

This home as “the whole nine yards” in convenience.

Note that Fort Walton Beach is home to Eglin Air Force Base.

This is about all we know of the origin of the whole nine yards. It appears in the mid-1960s in US Air Force circles.

But the lack of evidence for a specific origin has not stopped people from offering a myriad of potential explanations, many of them touted as authoritative.

First, let’s deal with one that concerns the Air Force. It is often claimed that the nine yards is a reference to the amount of ammunition carried in a World War II fighter. Many American fighter planes of the war carried up to 500 rounds for each .50 caliber machine gun on board. 500 rounds of .50 caliber ammo does indeed measure out to almost exactly 27 feet, or nine yards. To give the whole nine yards, according to this explanation, would be expend all your ammunition at a target. While at first blush this seems to square with the Air Force citations from the 1960s, the explanation does not stand up to scrutiny. First, ammunition is never measured in length of the belt. It is measured in number or rounds or in weight. Second, the phrase is absent from WWII literature. If it were of WWII vintage, citations of usage dating back to the 1940s would certainly have been found by now. Finally, the explanation itself doesn’t appear until the 1990s. This is pretty obviously an after-the-fact attempt to rationalize the meaning of the phrase.

Another common explanation is that the nine yards is a reference to the capacity of ready-mix concrete trucks. According to this explanation, concrete trucks would carry a load of nine cubic yards and the whole nine yards referred to delivering the entire truck’s capacity to one work site. Again, this explanation does not square with the evidence. The largest concrete trucks in the 1960s did indeed carry nine cubic yards, but most were significantly smaller. And the concrete explanation does not fit with the military citations. If this were the inspiration of the phrase, how did it get from the construction business into the mouths of Air Force pilots in Vietnam?

Scottish kilts are often suggested as the inspiration. Allegedly, nine yards of cloth would be used in the making of a kilt. Putting aside the fact that the size of the person is the determining factor in the amount of cloth used, the phrase is most definitely American in origin. There is absolutely no evidence that the phrase comes from Scotland.

Many other garments have been suggested as the origin, a man’s suit, a sari, a sarong, a kimono, a bridal train, a burial shroud, etc. Again, there is no standard amount of cloth for any of these garments (and nine yards would be far too much in most cases). Not to mention that there is no evidence in the literature of a sartorial origin.

Other explanations, all lacking evidence, include:

• The amount of dirt in a large burial plot;
• The number of properties, or yards, in a standard city block in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Levittown, (pick your city);
• The amount of cloth used in a burial shroud;
• The capacity of coal trucks; and
• The number of yards on a square rigged sailing ship (yards being the horizontal poles that hold the sails), even though it was not uncommon for such ships to have
  eighteen yards.

One final possibility is that it derives from American football, but was originally intended to be ironic. To go the whole nine yards was to fall just short of the goal of ten yards.

In summary, this is just one of those idiomatic phrases that defy explanation. This may not be satisfying, but it is not uncommon in English.

(Sources: Historical Dictionary of American Slang; ADS-L; Newspaperarchive.com; Cecil Adams, More of the Straight Dope, Ballantine, 1988.)