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Joined: Sep 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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As long as you're not using four on the floor at the same time duncan, it's o.k.
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
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robably one of the hundreds of people who have tried to make up an origin for the phrase that has no known origin.
Yep, that's what I was thinkin', Jazzo...this guy claims to be a credible linguist and yet he uses sourceless mail-in material? Huh? But I've never run across anything on the whole nine yards before, so, myth or not, I figured it was worth putting up for a look.
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
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>Huh? But I've never run across anything on the whole nine yards before...
then you really owe it to yourself to look at the Quinion link -- he's got the whole nine yards.
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
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Sorry, according to the British High Court yesterday those of us residing in the UK can no longer even discuss anything that is measured in anything other than metric measures. This is because Brussels says so. Therefore anyone resident in the EC/EU/ECC who even mentions measures such as yar... [erp@#*^!#]
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Joined: May 2000
Posts: 679
addict
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Joined: May 2000
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I'll agree with the acts and scenes, but characters? Surely there are more successful pairs. Romeo & Juliet for example.I was thinking more like Othello or King Lear. In fairness, I did say mostly!  Architects follow onto this by using triangulation to survey and to design.
Maybe somewhat, but we've mainly studied rectangles and circles as being in perfect proportion to the human form.Yup. Leonardo's The proportions of man is a good example of this. (Incidentally, it is the design on the back of the Italian Euro coin). I did architecture in a fomer life and it is near impossible to draw a square without a 45 degree set square triangle). You can do it with a compass BUT you need to centre that circle first and that requires triangulation.
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 55
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OP
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Joined: Jan 2002
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I've got it!!! I just figured out the true meaning behind the whole nine yards! What a revelation! OK. Sit back and listen, for I will now reveal the truth to you:
It's really quite simple. One day there was a big home football game. Among the fans was an enthusiastic dingbat admiring all the players on the field, a dingbat clueless about football, but really a sincere admirer of how all those hulks covered in their shoulder plates of armour could move across the field like ballerinas. She was in awe!
Then, at one telling point in the game, seeing that her team was only nine yards from making a touchdown (actually it was ten yards, but she'd been very confused about the measurement between those lines), she shouted out something like, "Battuh, battuh, battuh, battuh...!" And when the winning touchdown was scored, she shouted, "He went the whole nine yards!" A reporter, taking notes beside her, asked, "May I quote you?" She batted her eyes at him, and said, "Why certainly! I'm their biggest fan, you know!" And, as in the case of, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," her words went down in sports history forever.
And that, my friends, is the explanation behind THE WHOLE NINE YARDS. You heard it first here on A.Word.A.Day's Wordplay and Fun!
From one of many shining points of illumination,
OrB~
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
Thanks, tsuwm...Quinion, indeed, has the whole nine yards on the whole nine yards! Just like the full monty, numerous theories but nothing certifiable, no cigar. He does say the WWII ammo story may have "merit" because its the right time-frame. And with even more pertinence to this number thread, he had this to offer: Some writers argue that the number isn't a dimension of any kind: Jonathon
Green, in his Cassell Dictionary of Slang, suggests that it's most likely to
represent a use of nine as a mystic number, after the fashion of nine
tailors, the nine muses, and several other expressions; Jesse Sheidlower
thinks that it may be related in this way to the number in the equally odd
expression dressed to the nines. Here's the link: http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/nineyards.htm
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