<P> This afternoon at 2: 30 will be called one of the baseball games that will be worth going a long way to see . The regular nine is going to play the business men as many innings as they can stand, but we cannot promise the full nine yards . </P> <P> The idiom was used three more times in the Mitchell Commercial over the next seven years, in the forms give him the whole nine yards (i.e., tell someone a big story), take the whole nine yards (i.e., take everything), and settled the whole nine yards (i.e., resolved everything). </P> <P> In other uses from this time period, the phrase was given as the whole six yards . In 1912, a local newspaper in Kentucky asked readers to, "Just wait boys until the fix gets to a fever heat and they will tell the whole six yards ." The same newspaper repeated the phrase soon afterward in another issue, stating "As we have been gone for a few days and failed to get all the news for this issue we will give you the whole six yards in our next ." The six - yard form of the phrase also appears in a 1921 headline in a local South Carolina paper . </P> <P> The phrase is not known to have been used in writing thereafter until a 1956 issue of Kentucky Happy Hunting Ground, where it appears in an article on fishing . After describing the contests and prizes, the author writes, "So that's the whole nine - yards ." It appeared in an article on hunting the following year, this time unhyphenated . </P>

Where does the term nine line come from