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"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." Its first usage was the punch line of an 1855 Indiana comedic short story titled "The Judge's Big Shirt." The earliest known idiomatic use of the phrase is from 1907 in Southern Indiana. The phrase is related to the expression the... Wikipedia