Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Eighty-six

Sure, eighty-six comes up when counting to one hundred, but in the world of slang, eighty-six takes on a whole host of meanings.

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Green's Dictionary of Slang provides two general definitions: unwelcome (from 1933) or dead (from 1986). Digging around a little more, I happened on a nifty article in the St. Louis Magazine column "Ask George" in which a reader asks how the term eighty-sixed in the restaurant biz came to mean that an item was unavailable. George responded:

When I first asked that same question, I was told this: that the standard height of a door frame was 8 feet 6 inches, and when an obnoxious guest was shown the door, he was “86’d.” That pacified me until I later heard that it took 86 ladles to empty a pot of soup on an Army mess line. After that number of ladles, the soup was 86’d. Then I did some research and realized the genesis of the term isn’t clear at all...

The article dives into a dizzying number of possible origins for this short bit o' slang. I encourage you to click on the link above and check them all out. I'll list some of my favorites here:

• The term originated in the soup kitchens of the Great Depression, where the standard pot held 85 cups of soup, so the 86th person was out of luck.
• The United States also has a Uniform Code of Military Justice that has an Article 86: Absence Without Leave, a.k.a. AWOL. 
•  Rotary phones had T on the 8 key and O on the 6 key, so to throw out (TO) something was to 86 it.
• Alcohol in the Old West was 100 proof. When a patron would get too drunk, the barkeep would serve him a less potent, 86 proof liquor, thereby 86’ing him. 
• There was a speakeasy bar in New York City's Greenwich Village at 86 Bedford Street called Chumley's, with no address on the door and several hidden exits. When the heat showed up, guests were known to 86 it, or remove themselves from the premises immediately.
• Others say it originated at Delmonico's Restaurant in NYC. Number 86 on their menu was a steak, the most popular item on the menu and one that often sold out. The term morphed into shorthand for being out of any item. 
•  The term originated with the number codes used by soda jerks: 86 was the code indicating they were out of an item. 
• There are those who claim the term refers to 86 inches, the standard depth of a grave in the U.S. So to 86 something is to bury it.

In the list, the timeframe of first use of eighty-six as slang seems to vary all over the place. For instance, the reference to the "Old West" would probably push it to 19th century.

Turning to my hardcopy of Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Volume 1, A – G wasn't very helpful. This dictionary offers up two general definitions with a couple sub-definitions: 

1. (a) dating from 1995: to end; stop; quash; discard or get rid of; (b) from 1978: to eliminate by killing, murder
2. (a) from 1958: to eject; put out; dismiss; send packing; (b) from 1967:  to get out (used in the sense of an imperative or command)

Merriam-Webster puts on its authoritative/imperative hat and declares that eighty-six first appeared in the early 1930s as soda-jerk slang to indicate an item was sold out.  As to "why" it would have come to mean this? M-W opines (with a shrug), "There is varying anecdotal evidence about why the term eighty-six was used, but the most common theory is that it is rhyming slang for nix." The Online Etymology Dictionary more-or-less agrees, putting first use at 1936.

All I can say is that I guess no one could be eighty-sixed in my nineteenth-century-based series and that I am now craving a root beer float...

Well, it *is* the first of June and almost summer.
By Sarah Afshar - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84665905

A tip o' the hat to author Camille Minichino, who first mentioned eighty-six in her enlightening Slang-o-rama guest post on Diner Lingo!