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Like many other Ask Yahoo! questions related to word and phrase origins, there's no clear answer to your question. Defined loosely as "all spiffed up" in formal clothing, the phrase "dressing to the nines" may have come from the sharply dressed British Army¿s 99th Regiment of Foot back in the 1850s. Only problem with that theory is the phrase first appears back in 1793 in the poetry of Robert Burns. Some speculate it's a reference to the nine Muses of Greek mythology, while others
theorize that because nine is the highest single-digit number, it symbolizes the best or perfection. Still others speculate the saying is related to the nine yards of fabric needed to make a suit. We'll just file this one in our "Unsolved" file next to the other number-nine stumper, "the whole nine yards."
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