Where Did ‘The Whole Nine Yards’ Come From?
Etymologist William Safire once claimed, “The whole nine yards is one of the great etymological mysteries of our time.” Indeed, the phrase “the whole nine yards” has different meanings depending on who you ask. To film buffs, it’s a 2000 movie starring Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry. To NFL refs,
it’s one yard short of a first down. But to most people, it’s a colloquialism indicating an all-out effort. However, this idiom’s etymological origins aren’t certain. According to the OED, one of the earliest printed uses of the phrase can be traced to an 1855 short story in the New...
