To the nines
English idiom
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Origin
The phrase is said to be Scots in origin.[2] The earliest written example of the phrase is from the 1719 Epistle to Ramsay by the Scottish poet William Hamilton:[3]
The bonny Lines therein thou sent me,
How to the nines they did content me.
Robert Burns' "Poem on Pastoral Poetry", published in 1791, also uses the phrase:[4][5]
Thou paints auld nature to the nines,
In thy sweet Caledonian lines.
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (New and Revised edition. 1981) states that the phrase is "perhaps a corruption of 'then eyne' (to the eyes)"
The phrase may have originally been associated with the Nine Worthies or the nine Muses. A poem from a 17th century collection of works by John Rawlet contains the following lines:[3]
The learned tribe whose works the World do bless,
Finish those works in some recess;
Both the Philosopher and Divine,
And Poets most who still make their address
In private to the Nine.