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Origin of Phrases - D
Dressed to the nines
Meaning: Dressed flamboyantly, dressed well.
Example: New years eve is the one day of the year when people like to go out dressed to the nines.
Origin: Common lore has it that a tailor making a high quality suit uses more fabric. The best suits are made from nine yards of fabric. This may seem like a lot but a proper suit does indeed take nine yards of fabric. This is because a god suit has all the fabric cut in the same direction with the warp, or long strands of thread, parallel with the vertical line of the suit. This causes a great amount of waste in suit making, but if you want to go "dressed to the nines", you must pay for such waste.
Alternatively, The meaning is drawn from the phrase "the whole nine yards" which has come to mean a complete high quality job without cutting corners.
Alternatively, This saying originated in Shakespeare's time and is connected with the price a person had to pay for theater tickets depending on where their seats were located. The farthest seats were one pence and the ones closest to the stage were nine pence. If you sat in the expensive seats you would feel obliged to dress up so as not to look out of place with the other wealthy patrons.
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