"The whole nine yards" ?

Thus spake The Other Harry:
[nq:1]I was recently talking to a friend about where the expression "the whole nine yards" comes from. She suggested that ... does not make sense to me. Nine yards is one too few. I'm thinking something more like sewing. Anyone know?[/nq]
It comes from the Full Monty , from the treatment of brass monkeys (rather than from the treatment of pre-made sandwiches).

[nq:1]I was recently talking to a friend about where the expression "the whole nine yards" comes from. She suggested that ... does not make sense to me. Nine yards is one too few. I'm thinking something more like sewing. Anyone know?[/nq]

It comes from the typical width of a house in medieval England.

Fabian
I hate having to put on a show of being mean, but it seems the only

[nq:1]I was recently talking to a friend about where the expression "the whole nine yards" comes from. She suggested that ... does not make sense to me. Nine yards is one too few. I'm thinking something more like sewing. Anyone know?[/nq]
Yeah, I do. Back in medieval times a big important lord wanted to divide the back yard of his castle into nine yards for his nine sons, but one of the sons,

[nq:2]This page includes an entry for the phrase, and doesn't favour the machine gun theory: http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorw.htm[/nq]
[nq:1]But can we trust someone who uses a greengrocers' apostrophe ("Spitfire's")? WWII Mustangs carried 1880 rounds of ammunition, or about .

[nq:2]But can we trust someone who uses a greengrocers' apostrophe ... a woefully small amount of ammunition for a machine gun.[/nq]
[nq:1]Considering the Spitfire: The .303 Brownings had a cyclic rate of 1200 rpm. But the ammunition per gun was exhausted ... round (to include the disintegrating link) then 300x 3/4 = 225" = 18' 9" = 9 yards and a bit.[/nq]
I think the problem is that we fo

[nq:1]I think the problem is that we forget that there were only two feet in a yard back in those days.[/nq]
Heh! AAARRGHHH!
Mike
These **** Specsaver specs!

M.J.Powell