Does anyone know where this phrase comes from?
Ah, Dave, the short answer seems to be "no one has a clue," but read on for the guesses I've heard about.
First, you might visit straightdope.com, a very entertaining site that addresses imponderables such as this. The author, Cecil Adams, has addressed this one several times, so you might get more from him.
The leading candidates seem to be:
Something to do with football. Still, you gotta get 10 yards to make a first down, so this connection is pretty tenuous.
Something to do with the clothing industry. Various theories point out that 9 yards of fabric would make a swell suit; others say that that is way too much. I'm no tailor so I have no idea.
Something to do with ammunition. If you can picture those Mexican federales in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," you have it. Those big loopy ammunition straps (whose name escapes me) may have been 9 yards long total, but then again, maybe not.
Something to do with WWII. Again, my memory of this is vague, but rest assured, it's another big fat stretch of the imagination.
So again, nobody knows, but there's no shortage of theories. Anyone else?
be prepared for a lot of answers--
I have heard two reasonable ideas
In the construction industry, a 9 (cubic) yard truck is the norm for concrete trucks
If you want to buy concrete-- you must by the "whole nine yards" no matter you only need 3 or 4 yards to complete your job.-- Construction companies would roll together 3 or 4 small jobs-- people who wanted several yards, and "sell the whole nine yards" 3 or 4 times--
Since most of these transaction where in cash-- it became a neat way of generating extra cash--
An alternate idea comes from the military-- a machine gun "strip" was nine yards long-- if you fired the whole nine yards-- that was a lot of ammo.
but i am sure others will have ideas-- I am not sure if there really is a definative answer-- but if there is, tsuwm will try to deliver it!
as the minions suggest, speculation abounds. here's what I'd do if I wanted to read the whole nine yards: go to google.com and type in...
"whole nine yards" derivation
(include quotation marks)
as usual, I like Quinion's take...
http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/nineyards.htm(as he points out, this is the second-most asked question in all of linguistics, the first being that execrable -gry query.)