eight·y-six or 86
tr.v. eight·y-sixed or 86·ed, eight·y-six·ing
or 86·ing,
eight·y-six·es or 86·Es Slang
1. a. To refuse to serve (an unwelcome customer)
....b. To ignore
2. a. To throw out; eject.
....b. To throw away;
discard; get rid of; not use
Many
years ago, Chumley's Restaurant, at 86 Bedford Street in Greenwich
Village, New York City, had a custom of throwing rowdy customers
out the back door. During Prohibition, Chumley's was a speakeasy
owned by Leland Stanford Chumley. It also served as the headquarters
and printing office of the International Workers of the World
(or the "Wobblies") in New York. When the Wobblies
held their meetings in the front room of the restaurant and the
cops were on the way, someone would shout "86," and
they would all exit through the back door. Chumley's was frequented
by a seemingly infinite list of famous authors and public figures.
An abbreviated list would include: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Arthur Miller, James Agee,
e.e. cummings, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg,
Erica Jong, Jack Kerouac, Sinclair Lewis, Norman Mailer, W. Somerset
Maugham, Margaret Mead, J.D. Salinger, Orson Welles, and Thornton
Wilder, among many, many others.
Eventually,
restaurant workers started using "86ed" as a synonym
for something being thrown out or "Do not sell to that
customer" or "The kitchen is out of the item
ordered." — like the Fillet is 86ed ... or the soup
is 86ed. The term soon became part of the colorful "hash
house" or "lunch house" jargon adopted by the brash
and often sassy waitresses and countermen who worked in diners
in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s. In those years it was a
common practice for a waitress to call out the order to the cook.
There
are other restaurant-oriented explanations: that a fashionable
New York restaurant only had 85 tables, so the eighty-sixth was
the one you gave to somebody you didn’t want to serve; or
that this usage originated from the famous Delmonico's Restaurant
in New York City, as item number 86 on their menu, their house
steak, often ran out during the 19th century.
Another
origin frequently given relates the expression to the strengths
of spirits served in bars. It is said that these were normally
100 degrees proof but that when a customer was getting over-heated
they served instead a weaker brew that was only 86 degrees proof.
Possibly a reference to article 86 of the New York state liquor
code which defines the circumstances in which a bar patron should
be refused service or "86ed".
More
theories of the origin of this usage include (in no particular
order):
**
Eighty miles out and six feet under; when a person
who is to be killed by the mafia is forced to dig his own grave
many miles away from civilization.
** Maybe
it derives from British merchant shipping, in which the standard
crew was 85, so that the 86th man was left behind.
** The
term came into popular use among soldiers and veterans to describe
missing soldiers as 86'd. Rather than describe buddies missing
in action, it was slang to describe the MIA as being AWOL, therefore
violating UCMJ Sub Chapter X Article 86.
**
Another explanation is the possibility of a simple
variation of the slang term deep six, which has identical meaning,
and is simply meant to describe the approximate depth of water
needed for a burial at sea.
**
One possible theory is the public outdoor observatory
on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, because its been
the site of more than 30 suicides.
**
Another origin related to the Empire State Building
is the fact that all the elevators stop at the 86th floor. Hence,
everyone had to leave. The building opened in 1931, apparently
a few years before the term became popular.
**
The Oxford English Dictionary suggests it may have been rhyming
slang for nix, which seems plausible. Although it’s
often thought of as typically American, nix actually
entered the language in the latter part of the eighteenth century
in Britain; it was borrowed from a version of the German nichts,
nothing. But it seems that eighty-six was created as rhyming slang
in the United States.
**
For many baseball fans, the most popular if misplaced
reference was born of the 1986 playoff debacle for the Boston
Red Sox. Game 6 and (eventually) the World Series slipped through
the glove of first baseman Bill Buckner in the bottom of the 9th
inning. The Sox didn't recover from the letdown in time for Game
7 and the New York Mets took the '86 crown. With Red Sox fans
long considering the team to be cursed from trading Babe Ruth
for cash and the 1986 World Series representing the closest shot
the team had at winning the World Series in decades, the term
'86 took on the meaning of "not happening."
**
"Eighty-six" is attested as a verb meaning
"get rid of" from 1955 on. It was surely in reference
to this meaning that Maxwell Smart, the hero of the 1960s sitcom
"Get Smart!", was Agent 86.
