Why do we say "Dressed to the nines"?

Meaning:

Dressed elaborately or to perfection.

Background:

The origin of this saying actually comes in three parts. First, let’s consider the number “nine.” What’s so special about this particular digit?

The number nine appears frequently in antiquity. There are nine muses in Greek folklore and nine worlds joined by the world tree, Yggdrasil, in Norse mythology. In early South American cultures the figure also has significance, as there are nine levels of the Underworld in both Aztec and Mayan legends. Dante speculated about nine circles of hell, and in Roman Catholicism there are nine choirs of angels. Until recently, astronomers indicated nine planets made up our solar system (Pluto was downgraded in 2006).

Some speculate that the number nine represents completion. It’s the last single digit in our numeric system and is also the number of months for a typical human pregnancy. The number three has its own deep significance (e.g., the Christian trinity) and nine is three squared, making it an especially powerful integer. It’s thought the phrase “to the nines” grew out of this interpretation, that nine embodied perfection — the best of the best.

The saying made it into the Oxford dictionary in the 18th century, with the earliest example of it in writing coming from Scottish poet William Hamilton in his 1719 poem, Epistle to Ramsay:

The bonny Lines therein thou sent me, How to the nines they did content me.

Robert Burns also makes use of the phrase in his 1791 work, Poem On Pastoral Poetry:

Though paints auld nature to the nines, In thy sweet Caledonian lines.

No one is really sure where the saying “dressed to the nines” came from, though. It seems to have become a popular phrase in the 19th century. Some speculate that it arose in conjunction with the 99th (Lanarkshire) Regiment of Foot, a British army regiment established in 1824 known for their elaborate and well-maintained uniforms. Another possibility is that it refers to the amount of cloth needed at the time to make an especially fine suit of clothing (which would also explain its sister-saying, “the whole nine yards”). There’s no evidence for either origin, however, even though being dressed to the nines remains the most common of the “to the nines” sayings still in use today.

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