adv
Meaning 1
All the way; with everything done completely or thoroughly.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
Phrase guide
the whole nine yards
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Pronunciation
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General-American: /ðə ˌhoʊl ˌnaɪn ˈjɑɹdz/
noun
Meaning 2
everything; often used, like etc., to finish out a list.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Qualifier: And
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
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, the whole bang shoot, the whole nine yards, the works, whole ball of wax, whole hog, whole enchilada, whole kit and caboodle, whole package, whole shebang, whole shitting match, whole shooting match, whole smash
Antonyms: none provided
History
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.
Across languages
Translations
7 source translations are retained for this English entry.
- Dutch: hottentottententententoonstelling — (And) everything
- Finnish: koko hoito — (And) everything
- Finnish: koko potti — (And) everything
- Finnish: helahoito — (And) everything
- German: das volle Programm — (And) everything
- Hungarian: minden — (And) everything
- Spanish: y toda la pesca — (And) everything