Whole 9 yards
- Thread starter Onewolf426
- Start date
I heard it came from concrete. Trucks carried 9 yds but only delivered 8. Who knows?
Never heard the ammo explanation. Thanks!
Bassbob
Emissary
Concrete trucks can deliver 10 yards. At least that's been the case for at least the last 40 years that I know of.
This was from the “early days”. Don’t know if it was true or not.
Okay… had to go to the “all knowing” wikipedia. There are a more theories than i can count! Most make no sense. Some are from the mid-1800’s with the first incarnation appearing as the “whole 6 yards.” Some involve sports. At any rate, both the ammo belt and concrete mixer theories are mentioned but deemed not to be true. How dare they! Those wicked wiki’s!!
Take it with a grain of salt… it’s wikipedia.
en.m.wikipedia.org
Take it with a grain of salt… it’s wikipedia.
The whole nine yards - Wikipedia
Jekylmeister
Operator
Do you gents mind if I sleep through this?
Trucks in my area carry 11 yards.
powerboatr
Professional
no more than 10 yards here due to WEIGHT
Nope. Get some rest.
Bassbob
Emissary
Some carry 14 or 15 yards, but those are generally for large construction sites. For example the east and west highrises at Ballpark Village in downtown St. Louis. I was down there running all the main and services while they were building it. They were pumping concrete 30 floors up. I say 30, I don't know how tall they are, but they are up there. An army of really long concrete trucks lined up to feed the pumps.
You aren't going to get trucks like that in your nice residential neighborhood though. When I call for a truck the maximum is 10 yards per truck.
Annihilator
Emissary
I thought this was about the Bruce Willis movie at first…….
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BreakingWind
Master Class
Origins of phrases and words are one of my guilty pleasures. Like this one, "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey". In the days when warships were armed with canons they would stack the canon balls pyramid style. To hold the bottom tier they used a thing called a monkey (Think of a 4 down, 4 across egg carton). Because of the moist sea air it could not be contructed of iron or the bottom tier would rust to the monkey. The solution was to make the monkey out of brass; thus the brass monkey. Brass shrinks when it gets cold and if it got cold enough it would shrink enough to no longer hold the cannon balls or freeze the balls off the brass monkey. There's also some other good ones, like "don't throw out the baby with the bath water", "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot ten days old", "Ship Hight In Transit", "thresh hold", "upper crust"...
I could go on but you get the point.
I could go on but you get the point.
KillerFord1977
SAINT
It derived from .50 cal ammo in aircraft of ww2.
Wingmen would say to their fellow pilots in a dogfight, give them the whole nine yards
Mind your P’s and Q’s is another one said a lot.. It refers to English bartenders telling their patrons who were getting rowdy to mind their pints and quarts of beer. Bartender was going to stop serving them
I know there was a reason I came here.
Bassbob
Emissary
Or what Ranger Gord said, " Never fight fire with fire, you just get more fire". Or his wisdom on the old adage, " 2 birds with one stone". It's BS. One stone per bird people.
Lexie__M
Custom
Yes, 200 rds of 50cal for each Mar Duce. A P51 had 6 Mar Duce's.
When fighter pilots came back from a mission and he said, "I gave them the whole nine yards" it meant he shot all 200 rounds from all 6 guns at a ship/freighter/gun emplacement/etc.
The real meaning has changed with time.