dressed to the nines

Very well dressed and fashionable, typically for a formal event. I have to be dressed to the nines at this gala tonight—a lot of important people will be there. The whole family will be dressed to the nines at the wedding, I'll make sure of it. You can't just wear a cocktail dress to an event with the president—you have to come in dressed to the nines!

Fig. dressed very stylishly with nothing overlooked. She showed up for the picnic dressed to the nines. Clare is usually dressed to the teeth in order to impress people.

If someone is dressed to the nines or is dressed up to the nines, they are wearing very smart or glamorous clothes. Everyone is dressed to the nines. Huge hats, frills, tight dresses, sequins and high heels. Lola was off to a party, all dressed up to the nines. Note: You can also say that someone is done up to the nines. It felt like a wedding, with everyone done up to the nines. Note: There have been many explanations offered for the origin of this expression. Most relate to the number nine in some way, but none has been generally accepted.

Very fashionably attired. The first expression is a nineteenth-century Americanism. It appears in print in E. G. Paige’s Dow’s Patent Sermons, ca. 1849 (“A gentleman tiptoeing along Broadway, with a lady wiggle-waggling by his side, and both dressed to kill”). The precise analogy is no longer known. “Kill” may allude to the idea of making a conquest, or perhaps it is an extension of something “done to death”—that is, overdone. Dressed to the nines, also put as dressed up to the nines, is British in origin and literally means elaborately dressed to perfection. The “nines” were singled out to signify “superlative” in numerous other contexts from the late eighteenth century on, but no one is quite sure why. Some say it is because nine, as the highest single-digit number, symbolizes the best. Today, however, it is the numeral ten that signifies the best (as, for example, in Olympics judging). Other writers suggest that nines is a corruption of “to then eyne”—that is, to the eyes—but this interpretation doesn’t make much sense either. Describing an old department store holding its final sale before closing and lavishly decorated for Christmas, Mary Cantwell observed that “the corpse was dressed to the nines” (New York Times, Dec. 1989).

Wearing fashionably elegant clothing. History fails to offer a definitive explanation for this phrase. Among those that have been advanced are emulating the Nine Worthies of the ancient world, the British Army's 99th Foot Regiment's smart uniform, the nine buttons on a medieval woman's gloves, and the nine muses. Whatever the real derivation, we can agree that “nine” has a special significance in the English language, as in “cloud nine” and “the whole nine yards.”