Up to eleven

"Up to eleven", also phrased as "these go to eleven", is an idiom from popular culture describing something that is up to or beyond the maximum threshold, or to an extremely high or strong degree. The phrase originates from the 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap, where guitarist Nigel Tufnel demonstrates a guitar amplifier whose volume knobs are marked from zero to eleven, instead of the usual zero to ten.

In 2002, the phrase entered the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary with the definition "up to maximum volume".

Original scene from This Is Spinal Tap

The phrase was coined in a scene from the 1984 rock mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap by the character Nigel Tufnel, played by Christopher Guest. In this scene, Nigel gives the rockumentary's director, Marty DiBergi, played by Rob Reiner, a tour of his stage equipment. While Nigel is showing Marty his Marshall guitar amplifiers, he points out a selection whose control knobs all have a highest setting of eleven, unlike standard amplifiers whose volume settings are typically numbered from 0 to 10. Believing that this numbering increases the highest volume of the amp, he explains, "It's one louder, isn't it?" When Marty asks why not simply make the 10 setting louder, Nigel hesitates before responding: "These go to eleven."

Prior examples

The use of 11 as a maximum pre-dates This Is Spinal Tap by almost 40 years. In 1947, the Baldwin Locomotive Works and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway introduced the Chesapeake and Ohio class M-1 steam turbine locomotive. The locomotive's throttle included eleven settings, ranging from one (idling) to eleven (full speed). The locomotive's cruising speed was 70 miles per hour (113 km/h), at which point the throttle was on "seven".