Although we now use 'the whole nine yards' the expression derived in various forms: The earliest known example that I know of of a variant of the phrase is from an Indiana newspaper The Mitchell Commercial, Indiana May 1907: This afternoon at 2:30 will be called one of the baseball games that will be worth going a long way to see. Enter the length or pattern for better results. Middle English yerd, going back to Old English geard "fence, enclosure, dwelling, home, district, country," going back to Germanic *gara- (whence also Old Saxon gard "garden, dwelling, world," Middle Dutch gaert "garden, yard," Old High German gart "enclosure, circle, enclosed piece of property," Old Norse garr "enclosure, courtyard," Gothic gards (i-stem) "house, household, courtyard"; from an n-stem *garan-: Old Frisian garda "family property, courtyard," Old Saxon gardo "garden," Old High German garto), perhaps (if from *ghorts) going back to Indo-European *ghortos "enclosure," whence also Old Irish gort "arable or pasture field," Welsh garth "field, enclosure, fold," Breton garz "hedge," Latin hortus "garden," Greek chrtos "farmyard, pasturage". The switch from six yards to nine propagated a whole new theory: If the number could change, maybe it never actually was measuring anything. The Whole Nine Yards - Where to Watch and Stream - TV Guide Oz and Cynthia drunkenly sleep together, and he vows to protect her. At his office, he alters the dead detective's teeth to match Jimmy's dental records, then sets his and Jannis bodies on fire in Oz's car. The Whole Nine Yards is a 2000 Mafia comedy, directed by Jonathan Lynn and starring Matthew Perry and Bruce Willis, as well as Natasha Henstridge, Amanda Peet, Kevin Pollak, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Rosanna Arquette.. Nicolas "Oz" Oseransky (Perry) is a dentist in Montreal who is hopelessly in debt thanks to his late father-in-law's criminal deeds, and his marriage is miserable with him and . Use of the phrase became widespread in the 1980s and 1990s. A struggling dentist's life is turned upside down when a famous gangster moves in next door, and his wife convinces him to inform a notorious mob boss about the gangster's whereabouts. [16], In a short story published in 1962, the phrase is attributed to "a brush salesman". It then made $9.6 million in its sophomore weekend and $7.2 million in its third. Jonathan E. Lighters Historical Dictionary of American Slang, published in the mid-1990s, unearthed a slightly earlier citation: Elaine Shepards 1967 Vietnam War novel, The Doom Pussy. In fact, and in the text below I will make a case for this, there's little point in looking for what the 'yards' refer to, or the significance of there being nine of them, as the expression is fanciful and 'the whole nine yards' is just a way of saying 'the whole thing'. Critics slammed this film for being "predictable" and "inconsistent," proving that star power isn't everything in the movie business. A subsequent hunt for this older variant of the phrase turned up three mentions in Kentuckys Mount Vernon Signal newspaper: two from 1912, found by Shapiro, and a third from 1916, which Taylor-Blake spotted.. The Whole Nine Yards: Meeting Frankie Jiggs and JanniWhats happening in this The Whole Nine Yards movie clip?Oz (Matthew Perry) is getting beat up by Frankie Figs who introduces himself and asks about Jimmys whereabouts. Here are the10 Best Matthew Perry Movies (According To Rotten Tomatoes). Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced searchad free! En savoir plus. Production was handled by Rhythm D, with Aaron Clark, Dave Ferguson and John Ferguson serving as executive producers. See production, box office & company info, Siskel & Ebert: The Beach/Snow Day/Holy Smoke, 297 Rue Marcel-Gigure, Blainville, Qubec, Canada. Unfortunately,Perry hasn't had the same levels of success within his film career. The Oxford English Dictionary finds the earliest published non-idiomatic use in an 1855 Indiana newspaper article. Whether the measure is six yards or nine, it has a tantalizing specificity., That specificity has given rise to countless explanations involving just about any kind of yard: yards in a football down (which is really 10 yards), yards of cloth used for a Scottish kilt, and so forth. [26] It is also recorded in two contemporary novels concerning the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam, Carl Krueger's Wings of a Tiger (1966),[27] and Elaine Shepard's The Doom Pussy (1967). Nglish: Translation of yard for Spanish Speakers, Britannica English: Translation of yard for Arabic Speakers, Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about yard. The existence of a six-yard variant shows pretty clearly that this is not about yards of anything. Being sent back in time (turning into Zac Efron), the main character gets the opportunity to make different life decisions to alter how things ended up for him as an adult. "[1] Its origin is unknown and has been described by Yale University librarian Fred R. Shapiro as "the most prominent etymological riddle of our time".[2]. Vanderbilt sophomore guard John Jenkins is leading the SEC in scoring at 6 points per game. RELATED:8 Great Matthew Perry Roles Besides Friends. [22], Two 1965 newspaper articles quote U.S. military personnel serving in Vietnam using the phrase. The great thing about this phrase entering American slang relatively late in the game is that the author of that article was still around to question when linguists started getting curious about the phrases origin. Click the answer to find similar crossword clues . Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Thousands of bloopers make it into even the biggest movies, and some of these mistakes are very entertaining, if you know where to look. Enjoying a quiet life, he is stuck as his wife wants to remain in the business and he quickly ends up being dragged back into the criminal world once again. Oz meets a new neighbor, and realizes he is Jimmy "the Tulip" Tudeski, an infamous Chicago contract killer with a bounty on his head. Top reviews from the United States There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Jenkins shoots it from anywhere and everywhere. Note: But it didnt prove it, eitherso the sleuths soldiered on. A palatovelar is evidenced, however, in a group of semantically related words: Lithuanian rdas "rack for drying grain, flax or pease, cattle hurdle," ardis "fenced pasture," Old Prussian sardis "fence," regional Russian zord, zard "stack of hay or grain sheaves, enclosure around a stack." [15][29] The Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1997) cited Shepard's novel, thus pushing the earliest known usage back to 1967. In fact, they all refer to different things. The Whole Nine Yards (2000) - Full Cast & Crew - IMDb Enter a Crossword Clue. As for the kilts, "the whole nine yards" is largely an American phrase that didn't catch on in the UK initially, so the idea that it might have something to do with Scottish kilts is extremely unlikely. Start for Free. [15], Several key discoveries in further antedating the phrase were made by Bonnie Taylor-Blake, a neuroscience researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an amateur member of the American Dialect Society, an association of professional and amateur linguists whose mailing list often serves as a forum for word and phrase discoveries. Most of what you hear is, well, hearsay. The whole nine yards | xotube Behind the scenes, Perry had to leave the production part-way through, entering a rehabilitation clinic in order to fight his addiction to painkillers. Provided that a woman has a normal ovulation and fertility cycle and that she relies solely on barrier the whole nine yards bloopers for birth control, there is no reason she could not get pregnant after having sexual intercourse without using barrier methods. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, ~ it got The Whole Nine Yards., Im sorry. Almost Heroes has a talented cast of actors from Eugene Levy and Chris Farley to Matthew Perry himself. the whole nine yards - Spanish translation - Linguee Matthew Perry is best known as the lovable Chandler Bing from the hitsitcom,Friends. Earlies known example of 'the whole nine yards': The phrase, in the form that we now use, appeared in the same newspaper the year before - The Mitchell Commercial, 4th June 1908: Roscoe went fishing and has a big story to tell, but we refuse to stand while he unloads, He will catch some unsuspecting individual some of these days and give him the whole nine yards. A sequel, The Whole Ten Yards, was released in 2004. When comparing dental records this would be an instant dead give away. Read an issue on 31 Dec 2004 in Harrisonburg, Virginia and find what was happening, who was there, and other important and exciting news from the times. A vast number of explanations for this phrase have been suggested;[32][33] however many of these are no longer viable in light of what is now known about the phrase's history. Another newspaper from a nearby state, The Batesville Guard, Arkansas, June 1917 uses the phrase in just the same way: If he wants to know anything further he may write to me personally and I'll give him the whole six yards. An early example comes from the 1962 issue of Car Life: "Your staff of testers . Effective methods of birth control may be the best thing to happen to women in history aside from getting the rights to vote and being elected to public office. In the end, I am listed in the credits as Leanna McOemmecon, which I find quite amusing.). While Cynthia and Jill, who have just met face-to-face, are at the bank, Jimmy and Frankie take Oz onto a yacht. They certainly don't point to any of the supposed origins. Stomach acid weakens teeth enamel, and the teeth should not be brushed for at least thirty minutes after vomiting. The waters here begin to get a little cloudy. The three kids who run between Jimmy and Oz when they are standing next to the flower cart are. I dont know the origin, but it was quite a common expression of my youth in Scotland (I am 75), I believe the sailing thing may be correct though obviously I do not know, Perhaps American football, then? The movie gained mixed reviews from critics, with some finding it "sweet" and "fun." The above is only one possible account of this somewhat problematic etymon. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. RELATED:Friends: 10 Times Real Life Events Affected The Show. The Whole Nine Yards. The whole nine yards continued to show up in various publications throughout the 1960s, picking up steam toward the end of the decade when it could be found in newspaper advertisements, such as this one for a house in Florida, published in 1969: Four bedroom home, located in Country Club Estates. 'The Whole Nine Yards' Of What? : NPR Sophie wants Oz to go to Chicago and rat on the Tulip so they can collect the finder's fee. After a mobster agrees to cooperate with an FBI investigation in order to stay out of prison, he's relocated by the authorities to a life of suburban anonymity as part of a witness protection program. The Mysterious Origins of the Phrase 'The Whole Nine Yards' - MSN Accessed 4 Mar. Please read our Privacy Policy. American Dialect Society member (and neuroscience researcher) Bonnie Taylor-Blake found citations in a 1962 Car Life article about all nine yards of goodies in the Chevrolet Impala sedan, and in the July 1956 and January 1957 issues of a magazine published by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife. The first known use of the phrase as an idiom appears in The Mitchell Commercial, a newspaper in the small town of Mitchell, Indiana, in its May 2, 1907 edition: This afternoon at 2:30 will be called one of the baseball games that will be worth going a long way to see. Despite it being a very recent phrase, we just dont know. The phrase originated in the central states of the USA in the early 20th century. : a slender glass about three feet tall having a flared opening and a bulbous bottom also : the amount it contains a yard of ale Phrases the whole nine yards : all of a related set of circumstances, conditions, or details who could learn the most about making records, about electronics and engineering, the whole nine yards Stephen Stills Oz, ignorant of the $1 million, asks Cynthia to marry him and she accepts. A 1921 headline from The Spartanburg Herald-Journal in South Carolina reads "The Whole Six Yards of It." " The whole nine yards " or " the full nine yards " is a colloquial American English phrase meaning "everything, the whole lot" or, when used as an adjective, "all the way", as in, "The Army came out and gave us the . One theory held that the nine yards first referred to certain 27-foot-long ammunition belts used by Air Force pilots in World War II. See also "Plugs and Bugs" by Ferd Holtmann. All the way; with everything done completely or thoroughly. Watchlist. The film grossed $13.4 million in its opening weekend, finishing second at the box office. In case youre still unconvinced, however, here is a selection of those theories and further explanations about why they probably arent true: So, in the end, where did the whole nine yards come from? "[17][18] It appeared in an article on hunting the following year, this time unhyphenated. The Nine Yards is the debut studio album by American rapper Paperboy.It was released on January 26, 1993 through Next Plateau Entertainment. When the detectives inform Oz about the bodies found burned in his vehicle, they give him two names. The whole nine yards - Wikipedia StarringBruce Willis Matthew Perry Amanda Peet Michael Clarke Duncan Natasha Henstridge Kevin Pollak Directed byJonathan Lynn As Oz and Jimmy are getting into the car, a boom mic is reflected in the sun-roof. The length of the Saree worn by the Indian women is normally 6 yards. That seems to me not to be a use of the phrase as we now know it but a literal reference to nine yards of cloth. From there, the phrase continued to catch on, becoming popular enough to be used as the title of a movie starring Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry. A critically panned sequel with most of the original cast titled The Whole Ten Yards was released on April 9, 2004. You may not have heard the expression the whole nine yards until lately in the States, but it is much older than that. It was written by Mitchell Kapner and stars Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Natasha Henstridge. No one had previously jumped 27 feet. In the next shot, Oz re-affirms to the waitress no mayonnaise and Oz hands her the menu again. Plot summary Montreal, Canada. Since then, even earlier citations have shown up for both versions of the expression. very soon after they are coined and continue to do so for as long as the phrase is in common use. [23] The phrase was explained as something "teenagers say" in a military-oriented magazine in 1965. Challenging Standardized Test Words, Vol. In Canada, Frankie and Oz meet Jimmy, who reveals he and Frankie are planning to kill Janni and Cynthia. Oz is reluctant but complies. Talking about hunters, author Ron Rhody wrote: So thats the whole nine yards. (1956) and These guys go the whole nine yardsno halfway stuff for them. (1957). A detective would notice this usually and may assume Oz knew more than he was letting on. Oz attributes the softness to Jimmy falling in love. Fred Cassidy, founder of the Dictionary of American Regional English, had another idea. The maxim gun had a nine yard cloth belt that held 250 rounds of ammo. Here's a representation of the growth in use of 'the whole nine yards' in print worldwide. amanda of the whole nine yards Crossword Clue | Wordplays.com LSU Tigers Central the whole nine yards bloopers with the most comments in the last 7 days. the whole nine yards idiom informal mainly US everything you can possibly want, have, or do in a particular situation : When I was little, my family always had lots of pets - dogs, cats, hamsters, fish, rabbits - the whole nine yards. . The Whole Nine Yards is a 2000 American crime comedy film directed by Jonathan Lynn and distributed by Warner Bros. Starring: Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Rosanna Arquette Watch all you want. In April 1999, it was announced Matthew Perry would star alongside Bruce Willis in the Franchise Pictures-produced film. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $106 million. 2. Yet, on the other hand, others felt that the pacing was "off," and that the film wasn't funny often enough to be a success. The Oxford English Dictionary now dates the whole nine yards back to 1855; the whole six yards was in print at least as early as 1846. [15] Safire ended up writing nine columns on this subject and is largely responsible for the interest in it. I can find no examples of the expression in print from 1915 to 1950. It may not have escaped your attention that Indiana, Kentucky and Arkansas are geographically close to each other. [15][16] After describing the contests and prizes, the author writes, "So that's the whole nine-yards. The Whole Nine Yards: Meeting Frankie Jiggs and Janni (HD CLIP) Many people are convinced they know the origin of this expression, which has numerous speculative derivations, but aren't able to provide any evidence to support their belief of choice. The whole nine yards The whole six yards The full nine yards Early example of 'the full nine yards': The earliest known example that I know of of a variant of the phrase is from an Indiana newspaper The Mitchell Commercial, Indiana May 1907: This afternoon at 2:30 will be called one of the baseball games that will be worth going a long way to see. Surely the feat cried out for this headline? Inside, Janni is distracted by a naked Jill; she, Jimmy and Frankie kill Janni and his men. Whats this? The Whole Nine Yards streaming: where to watch online? - JustWatch Regrettably, plausibility doesn't get us very far. Test your knowledge - and maybe learn something along the way. Now they've discovered an even earlier version. Plus Bloopers and mistakes in movies, TV, books, and more. ", Bonnie Taylor-Blake, The whole nine yards (1908, 1912, 1914), ADS-L (September 6, 2013). Nevertheless, many people have invented a meaning. The whole nine yards is unusual in that, having been well enough known in Indiana in 1907/8 to have appeared several times in newspapers without the authors feeling the need to explain it, it disappeared from view for about 40 years. It was written by Mitchell Kapner and stars Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Natasha Henstridge. Watch The Whole Nine Yards | Netflix Some found that it started funny, but didn't maintain that level until the very end, which stopped it from being labelled as a great comedy. Urban Dictionary: Whole nine yards Thousands of hours of research has gone into unearthing the evidence that will prove which of the many possible derivations is true. Learn a new word every day. Its a tough league thats life, said freshman Ralston Turner, who scored 12 against the Bulldogs. the whole nine yards dfinition, signification, ce qu'est the whole nine yards: 1. everything you can possibly want, have, or do in a particular situation : 2. everything you can. I didnt get a chance to see him last year, Janni instructs Frankie to accompany Oz home and keep an eye on Jimmy until Janni and his men can take him out. From that point on it begins to appear more widely in print. Working alongside Salma Hayek, the duo attempt to turn a one night stand into a full-on marriage, which of course, is something that only makes sense in the movie world. [2], The Whole Nine Yards grossed $57.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $49.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $106.4 million.[1]. But at least now hopefully you wont be fooled by any of the above false etymologies.