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Thanks, George! In reference to my question "Where did the expression 'the whole nine yards' originate, George referred me to this link: http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/nineyards.htm Excerpts from this article are below (I just found this so interesting!): "This is one of the great unsolved mysteries of modern etymology, for which many seek the truth and almost as many find explanations, but hardly anyone has a clue. What we do know is that the phrase is recorded from the 1960s, is an Americanism (it's nothing like so well known in Britain, for example), and has the meaning of "everything; all of it; the whole lot; the works". But there are no leads anyone can discover to a reasonable idea of where it came from . . . I've seen references to the size of a nun's habit, the amount of material needed to make a man's three-piece suit, the length of a maharajah's ceremonial sash, the capacity of a West Virginia ore wagon, the volume of rubbish that would fill a standard garbage truck, the length of a hangman's noose, how far you would have to sprint during a jail break to get from the cellblock to the outer wall, the length of a standard bolt of cloth, the volume of a rich man's grave, or just possibly the length of his shroud, the size of a soldier's pack, the length of cloth needed for a Scottish "great kilt", or some distance associated with sports or athletics, especially the game of American football." The article goes on to linking "the whole nine yards" to a full concrete load, the sails on a three-masted ship, something to do with pilots and ammunition during WWII, and sinally - some say it doesn't represent a dimension at all, but a "mystic" number. So I guess my conclusion is "go figure!" Thanks, again, George. Peggy ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn