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| | World Wide Words: The Full Monty |
 | | One suggestion put forward in a newspaper article is that it was invented in the early eighties by Ben Elton, an alternative comedian, possibly after the model of the whole shebang, which has long been known in Britain, though it originated in the US. |
 | | Monte is certainly long-attested in both of these senses, but there’s no firm evidence that the full monty has been derived from it, or when it first appeared, or how it got from America or the antipodes into British usage. |
 | | Field Marshal Montgomery, General Montgomery as he was during the Second World War, certainly had the nickname Monty (there was a film, you may recall, with the title I Was Monty’s Double, about a man who impersonated him). |
| www.worldwidewords.org /articles/monty.htm (0 words) |
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