After watching the raw Justin Timberlake video recording , reader Katie Rose write in to ask about the parentage of “ dressed to the nine . ” Reader Donna wrote with the same question , though I do n’t get it on what music video she ’s been watching .
There ’s heap of folk etymology for the phrase that tie clothing with the number nine . One says that the phrase come from the nine yards of material a tailor needed to make a really nice courtship . A few tailors I talked to , though , say four to five yards of textile should be sufficient for a three piece suit . Another origin storey suppose that the idiomatic expression refers to the 99th ( Lanarkshire ) Regiment of Foot , a British ground forces regiment established in 1824 , reportedly known for the immaculate precondition of their uniform . Still another clothing origin suggests that the idiomatic expression descends from the Old English say “ dressed to the optic , ” which , because Old English was eldritch , was write as “ dressed to theneyne . ” The cerebration goes that someone at some period heard “ then eyne ” and mistook it for “ the nine ” or “ the nines . ”
The hitch with these wearable - specific origins , though , is that the simple phrases “ to the nine ” and “ to the baseball club ” were already used to think “ to perfection ” for about a century before “ dressedto the nines ” came along . Whatever import the number nine had to warrant its place in the phrase , it does n’t seem to have always been specific to clothing .
This opens up the possibilities to a few more proposed origins , but there does n’t seem to be one solid answer . The “ nine ” in interrogation could still be a misheard “ then eyne ” and refer to the eye . It might also refer to a group of nine , example of which protrude up in myth and story all over the domain . In Christianity , thefruitsand thegiftsof the Holy Spirit are both nine in number . In Norse cosmogeny , the large tree diagram Yggdrasil unites nine worlds . The ancient Greeks had nine Mus . In Europe during the Middle Ages , the Nine Worthies were men drawn from pagan , Jewish and Christian chronicle as personifications of gallantry . “ The club ” we invoke when spill the beans about a natty dresser might mean any one of these groups , or something else , but a classic answer is elusive .
