To the nines

July 2nd, 2011 by admin

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5 comments on this post.

  1. Elizabeth Lightwood:

    July 5th, 2011 at 8:29 pm

    The CANOE theory is clearly rot because a three-masted square-rigger under full sail has upwards of twenty sails.

  2. OwenKL:

    July 7th, 2011 at 8:42 am

    Nines, being plural, make me think multiple nines are involved. 99% or to .9999… or more modernly, all scores above 9 in Olympic judging.

  3. Maarten:

    August 2nd, 2011 at 11:03 am

    After reading this article I started wondering and came up with another possibility – could it be that “to thine eyes” garbled into “to the nines”?

  4. Dave Hed:

    November 24th, 2017 at 10:52 pm

    The article already debunked that: It is unlikely that sometime in the centuries between Early Modern English (1500s) and 1719 some form of “to thine eyes” or “to the nines” wouldn’t have popped up in print.

    There should have been some examples in the books of the 1500s and 1600s.

  5. Groat, W.:

    January 25th, 2018 at 5:29 am

    Most informative, thank you.

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