"The Whole Nine Yards"

[salmonriverjohn]

I have been told but never read that the word SH*T came from the need to store cargo so it wouldn't get wet on boats back in the wooden ship days. It stood for Ship High In Transit. Not sure if this is true or not but a guy I consider a reputable person relayed the story to me.

True and very close, the material that was hauled and shipped high in transit was dried manure to be used as fertilizer. If it were to get wet during a long haul and a spark,flame (like a lantern) were to come in contact with the methane gas,,, well you get the picture.

 

[MA Duce]

Referred to the belt of ammo that one particular WW2 fighter plane (Supermarine Spitfire) was loaded with a 27 foot belt for each machine gun. If you emptied your belt you gave them the whole 9 yards

That's what I've always read before the internet came along and now you can find 20 other theories

One of my favorites is "As hot as a two dollar pistol"..

Interesting, but a Spitfire's ammo wasn't that extensive. The Browning machine guns on Britain's Spitfire had 350-round belts of .303 British ammunition which were about 5.7 yards long. U.S. aircraft generally used .50 BMG ammunition, which measured 0.929 inches center-to-center. So a nine-yard belt would have had 301 rounds. The Grumman F6F Hellcat had ammunition belts of up to 400-rounds (10.3 yards) while the Boeing B-29 Superfortress and the Lockheed P-38 Lightning had belts of up to 500-rounds (nearly 13 yards).

 

[Kevatc]

True and very close, the material that was hauled and shipped high in transit was dried manure to be used as fertilizer. If it were to get wet during a long haul and a spark,flame (like a lantern) were to come in contact with the methane gas,,, well you get the picture.

Well my source has now risen in the credibility department even more so than he already was!

 

[teflon6string]

"Making money hand over fist" = use of a heavy mallet and hand-held dyes to stamp official images into a softer flat metal slug of a given weight, turning it into a recognized coin of the realm. Hence the often crude, off centered appearance of ancient coins.

 

[2506]

Well my source has now risen in the credibility department even more so than he already was!

Online Etymology Dictionary

Not an acronym...

 

[2506]

Interesting, but a Spitfire's ammo wasn't that extensive. The Browning machine guns on Britain's Spitfire had 350-round belts of .303 British ammunition which were about 5.7 yards long. U.S. aircraft generally used .50 BMG ammunition, which measured 0.929 inches center-to-center. So a nine-yard belt would have had 301 rounds. The Grumman F6F Hellcat had ammunition belts of up to 400-rounds (10.3 yards) while the Boeing B-29 Superfortress and the Lockheed P-38 Lightning had belts of up to 500-rounds (nearly 13 yards).

Online Etymology Dictionary

 

[Blitzkrieg]

Interesting, but a Spitfire's ammo wasn't that extensive. The Browning machine guns on Britain's Spitfire had 350-round belts of .303 British ammunition which were about 5.7 yards long. U.S. aircraft generally used .50 BMG ammunition, which measured 0.929 inches center-to-center. So a nine-yard belt would have had 301 rounds. The Grumman F6F Hellcat had ammunition belts of up to 400-rounds (10.3 yards) while the Boeing B-29 Superfortress and the Lockheed P-38 Lightning had belts of up to 500-rounds (nearly 13 yards).

9 x 3 is 27 ?

 

[MountainBear]

snopes.com: Brass Monkeys

I still like the explanation. I've never had much use for snopes.com or any of the other sights like that...

Sometimes the explanations in our heads, right or wrong, are just more fun. And when nothing is at stake from thinking this way, I think I'll just take a few things at face value (another etymology fun for you) and enjoy it...

 

[Ntaylor25]

Give 'em the whole nine yards!!!

I always heard this was what machine gunners would say as the belts that fed 'em were nine yards long.
Never heard it in regards to aircraft though.

 

[Swedish K]

the term "Balls to the wall" comes from aviation - the throttle levers had "ball" knobs on them and pushing the balls to the wall (as in firewall) is wide open throttle or going full out. (at least that is what I have read)

 

[teflon6string]

"Cost me an arm and a leg." Did not actually imply as commonly held today that something was so expensive it was like losing a priceless limb or two.

In times predating photography, a skilled artist could demand different rates depending upon how much of an important person they would draw, paint or sculpt. Certainly had a lot to do with the extra time invested. A bust (head and shoulders) cost a certain amount, and the commission would go up for including the upper body in an image. More for everything.

Aside, I suppose there was a certain diplomacy in enhancing beauty, brawn or stature depending on what the patron expected. Which, in some societies, might preclude "losing one's head." Probably won't see many oils of Henry VIII standing in a group portrait, the short guy in the middle. Although fat and girth did denote wealth, power and enviable privilege.

Thank God that has changed or we'd be looking at Rosie O'Donnell campaign posters. The horror.

 

[FreakyStylie]

I always thought the arm and leg thing was in reference to pirates because a pirate was compensated for the loss of body parts. You could get straight payment, or a share of slaves instead. A left arm was worth ~100-400 pieces of eight, but a right arm was worth ~600, with every hundred pieces of eight being worth one slave. You could get quite a crew for losing a right arm and right leg, which would make you quite the wealthy captain, and making your captain rise in rank . . . but a quite a cost.

 

[MA Duce]

9 x 3 is 27 ?

?? yes it is........but what are you referring to?

 

[2506]

"Three Squares a day " refers to the British navy's wooden plates that were square boards with sides on them, so the food would not slide off, and "Son of a Gun" came from the same nautical era.
If a women was having a hard time giving birth aboard a ship, they would fire a cannon near her and the concussion would help push the baby out. or so they thought.

This common term for a satisfying and filling repast (as in “three square meals a day”) leads many amateur etymologisers towards origins based on a literal reading of the words:
Sailors used to eat off wooden boards; these were square in shape and were usually not filled with food. However, after a heavy watch the sailors were given a large meal which filled the board — a square meal.
In Britain of yore, a dinner plate was a square piece of wood with a bowl carved out to hold your serving of the perpetual stew that was always cooking over the fire. You always took your ‘square’ with you when you went travelling, in hopes of a square meal.
In former times in the US military, you were required to sit formally at meals, bolt upright with arms at right-angles, so forming a square shape. So a meal in the mess was always a square meal.
Wonderful stuff. Rubbish, of course, but entertaining rubbish.
It’s an interesting comment on the imagination of such storytellers that they haven’t created similar stories about square deal or fair and square. Yet these also employ square for something that is fair, honest, honourable or straightforward. Older phrases of similar type include the square thing and square play. Several of them date to the seventeenth century and even possibly earlier. This figurative sense comes from the idea that something made with exact right angles has been properly constructed (right in right angle is another reference to the same idea). Some of these may derive from Masonic ritual.
We know that square meal was originally American. Early examples seem to have come out of miners’ slang from the western side of the country. Mark Twain, in The Innocents Abroad, refers to it as a Californian expression and that squares, so to speak, with the oldest example I know of, which appeared in the Mountain Democrat of Placerville, California (a gold-mining town) of 8 November 1856: “We have secured the services of an excellent cook, and can promise all who patronize us that they can always get a hearty welcome and a ‘square meal,’ at the ‘Hope and Neptune.’” A slightly later one appeared in 1862 in the Morning Oregonian of Portland, Oregon, about a hotel that had opened in the town: “If you want a good square meal and a clean bed to sleep in, give Mr Lee a call.”
I found a further reference in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine of 1865, about the mining town of Virginia City in Nevada, created to serve the famous Comstock lode. “Says the proprietor of a small shanty, in letters that send a thrill of astonishment through your brain: ‘LOOK HERE! For fifty cents you CAN GET A GOOD SQUARE MEAL at the HOWLING WILDERNESS SALOON!’”
The writer felt the need to explain this strange phrase: “A square meal is not, as may be supposed, a meal placed upon the table in the form of a solid cubic block, but a substantial repast of pork and beans, onions, cabbage, and other articles of sustenance.”
Just so. Modern storytellers please copy.