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TRIVIA, BRAINTEASERS
& FASCINATING FACTS




Where did the term
"Eighty-sixed" come from?



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.


~Gathered from Sources throughout the Internet

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