Quiz time! In which of these situations is it appropriate to say “dressed to the nines”? Is it when someone is wearing a fancy tuxedo or floor-length ballgown — or when a lazy friend wears the same stained sweatpants for nine days? If you picked the elegant affair, you’re correct. In the latter situation, it’s time to burn those sweatpants, and take your friend shopping for new clothes ASAP.
“Dressed to the nines” means someone is going all out with their outfit, often in the form of elaborate or lavish clothing. The phrase is believed to come from the Scottish saying “to the nines” — meaning “to perfection” — often used to describe impeccably performed actions. At first, there was no inherent connection with clothing, as people used “to the nines” in a variety of circumstances.
While it most likely comes from a Scottish phrase, how the idiom got to Scotland is unclear. One prevailing theory relates to nine-pin bowling, a popular European game likely invented in the Middle Ages. Knocking over all nine pins with a single ball is a perfect throw, and the Dictionaries of the Scots Language speculates the phrase could be derived from that game’s rules.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first published use of the saying came in a 1719 poem Epistle to Ramsay by William Hamilton: “The bonny Lines therein thou sent me, / How to the nines they did content me.” The exact phrasing appeared in 1837 in The New York Herald: “One evening a smart young mechanic, ‘dressed to the nines,’ … might have been seen wending his way along Broadway.”
Today, “to the nines” commonly describes a situation where someone has gone all out, clothing-related or otherwise. Someone in a tux is “dressed to the nines,” a lavish wedding venue can be “decorated to the nines,” and a layered wedding cake may be “stacked to the nines.” Essentially, “to the nines” is a synonym for “to the nth degree,” and you can use it as such.
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