SHAGGY DOG:TO BE dressed up to the nines means to be wearing our finest suit or evening gown, writes Albert Jack
Some suggestions for the origin of this phrase lead us to tailoring and the belief that it takes nine yards of material to make the perfect three-piece suit. But that seemed a little bit weak to me, so I looked further and found most sources insist it began as "dressed up to the eyes", which has been corrupted over the years.
Still not convinced, I decided to work backwards and look for all the possible uses of the word "nine", discovering a little gem in the process. In the precious metals industry, the finest gold and silver are never classified as 100 per cent pure, but as 99.99 per cent; hence the finest metals are known as "the nines". It is my belief that "being dressed up in your nines" means to be wearing your finest jewellery.
Further evidence to support this theory lies in the archive of the Royal Gloucester, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regimental Museum in Salisbury.
Queen Victoria's favourite regiment was the Wiltshire (Duke of Edinburgh's) 99th Foot. Stationed at Aldershot, they were always chosen to guard the royal pavilion in Brighton, consequently becoming known as "the Queen's Pets". The officers' dress code included an unusual amount of gold lace on their uniforms; hence they were regarded as being "dressed up in their nines" for royal duty.
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When drinking with friends, it is not unusual for someone to announce bottoms up! as the session begins. Many imagine this to be the action of draining a glass so that the bottom is raised higher than our lips. Not so; in fact, events in history once again provide the root of this well-known phrase.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, English press gangs would coerce drinkers in London's dockside pubs into joining the armed forces, usually the navy. Men who accepted the "King's shilling" were deemed to have willingly contracted to join the navy, and this led to unscrupulous behaviour by the commissioned press gangs.
One of their dishonest techniques was to drop a shilling into the pint pot of a drunk or unsuspecting man, which would go undetected until the poor chap had drained his tankard.
Once the shilling was discovered, the press gangers claimed to others that this was proof that a payment had been accepted, and the victim would then be dragged away to wake up the following morning on board a ship far out to sea, unaware of what had happened to him the night before. The unfortunate fellow might then spend years on the ocean waves.
Once public houses and drinkers became aware of this scam, they introduced tankards with transparent bases (which can still be found hanging in many pubs to this day) and customers would be reminded to lift the pint up and check the bottom for illicit shillings before they began drinking.
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If someone has a gammy leg then one of their pins is not sufficiently strong to carry their full weight - it is a lame leg. But the term we should be using, in fact, is "game leg". "Game" derives from the Irish word cam, meaning "crooked". It has been in use for centuries, right up until the 1950s, when "game" started being pronounced "gammy", so resulting in our modern expression. An example of how regularly it was once used in its original form can be found in George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London(1933): "The room was an attic ten feet square, lighted only by a skylight, its sole furniture a narrow bedstead, a chair and a wash handstand with one game leg."
Extracted from Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep by Albert Jack; Penguin Books