Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

the whole nine yards

/ðə ˌhoʊl ˌnaɪn ˈjɑɹdz/

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.32 in modern English

Syllables: the w-hole nine -yards
IPA: /ðə ˌhoʊl ˌnaɪn ˈjɑɹdz/

30

Scrabble Score

17

Letters

3

Syllables

13

Unique Chars

Meaning

adv

All the way; with everything done completely or thoroughly.

noun

everything; often used, like etc., to finish out a list.

Example Sentences

"Would they want me to vote my conscience or would they want us to unanimously go the whole nine yards, declare him sane and possibly have the trial end up in a death sentence?"
"WWE went the whole nine yards, from making Tshirts with the slogan to having announcers mention his new handle approximately every four seconds anytime he was on-screen."
"Colleen had gone the whole nine yards, dressing up as a fortune teller, complete with huge gold earrings and a headscarf, which she'd plucked from her normal accessory box, she told Bronte."
"While there 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."
""I had a good job, a nice little house, the whole nine yards," she said."
"No, to her credit she kept right on going the whole time, telling me how she was from Mongolia, how she was an art student, how she was having an exhibition — the whole nine yards."

Etymology

Dave Wilton summarises the findings of Bonnie Taylor-Blake and others: :The phrase doesn’t have one particular origin, nor does it represent one particular metaphor. Instead, it seems to have evolved from a sense of yard meaning a vague quantity of something. Later, the words full or whole were attached to it, and even later it was quantified by the numbers six and nine, with the whole nine yards eventually winning out and becoming the canonical form. Use of the full phrase was for a long time restricted to the American Midwest, in particular to the region around the Kentucky–Indiana border, before breaking out into general American parlance in the middle of the twentieth century. … :So regardless of what someone else has told you, the whole nine yards does not refer to the length of a belt of WWII machine-gun ammunition, the amount of material needed to make a Scottish kilt or a sari, the number of spars on a sailing ship, the amount of concrete a cement mixer holds, or anything else.

Regional Pronunciation

American English: /ðə ˌhoʊl ˌnaɪn ˈjɑɹdz/

Inflected Forms

the full nine yards (alternative) the whole nine miles (alternative)

Synonyms

all the marbles bag and baggage everytang everything but the galley stove everything but the kitchen sink everything under the sun full monty hook line and sinker kit and caboodle lock stock and barrel

Questions

How do you pronounce the whole nine yards?: The recorded pronunciation is /ðə ˌhoʊl ˌnaɪn ˈjɑɹdz/.
What does the whole nine yards mean?: All the way; with everything done completely or thoroughly.
Where does the whole nine yards come from?: Dave Wilton summarises the findings of Bonnie Taylor-Blake and others: :The phrase doesn’t have one particular origin, nor does it represent one particular metaphor. Instead, it seems to have evolved from a sense of yard meaning a vague quantity of something. Later, the words full or whole were attached to it, and even later it was quantified by the numbers six and nine, with the whole nine yards eventually winning out and becoming the canonical form. Use of the full phrase was for a long time restricted to the American Midwest, in particular to the region around the Kentucky–Indiana border, before breaking out into general American parlance in the middle of the twentieth century. … :So regardless of what someone else has told you, the whole nine yards does not refer to the length of a belt of WWII machine-gun ammunition, the amount of material needed to make a Scottish kilt or a sari, the number of spars on a sailing ship, the amount of concrete a cement mixer holds, or anything else.

How to pronounce the whole nine yards

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “the whole nine yards”.
Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling (/ðə ˌhoʊl ˌnaɪn ˈjɑɹdz/) so you know which sounds to aim for.
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