<P> The Oxford English Dictionary places the earliest published non-idiomatic use of the phrase in the New Albany (Indiana) Daily Ledger, January 30, 1855 in an article called "The Judge's Big Shirt ." "What a silly, stupid woman! I told her to get just enough to make three shirts; instead of making three, she has put the whole nine yards into one shirt!" The first known use of the phrase as an idiom appears in The Mitchell Commercial, a newspaper in the small town of Mitchell, Indiana, in its May 2, 1907 edition: </P> <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>

Where did the saying give them the whole 9 yards come from