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I came across a phrase, “86 to sb.” in the following paragraph of an article titled “The owner of the Red Hen explains why she asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave,” in the Washington Post (June 23), that comes with a picture of an actual paycheck issued by the restaurant showing the code, “86” above the name of a recipient.

The paragraph reads;

If you ever heard the term “to 86 someone,” it comes from the restaurant industry – code to refuse service, or alternatively to take an item off the menu.

I’m curious to know why the number 86 came to represent the refusal of service at service establishments. Does someone know the provenance?

Addendum

I noticed that my post duplicates with the similar question posted in 2011, but I dont' think I find a convincing source of its provenance (first appearance, sources, usage trend, currency). It seems that the word gained recency and life with the restaurant owner's refusal to serve Sarah Huckabee in her Mexican restaurant. Is there any new source of its origin than ones I saw on the previous post?

I checked both Cambridge and Oxford online dictionaries for this word. Cambridge doesn't carry this word.

Oxford Dictionaries define "eighty six" as;

1.(informal) Eject or bar someone from a restaurant, bar etc.

2.Reject, discard or cancel.

Origin:

1930s (as a noun) used in restaurants and bars to indicate that a menu item is not available or that a customer is not to be served. Perhaps rhyming slang for nix, which sounds like a bit overstretched assumption to me.

The currency of the word or number - 86 is unexpectedly high based on google Ngram.

The usage can track back to earlier than 1800 (at 0.002% level) and keeps rising up to 0.00672% level in 2000.

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Yoichi Oishi
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    I've always understood "86 someone" to be gangland slang for killing them. I vaguely suspect a nautical origin. But Urban Dictionary gives a different slant, somewhere between your understanding and mine. – Hot Licks Jun 24 '18 at 22:29
  • A good reason to eat meals at home. – Bread Jun 24 '18 at 23:06
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    It seems the other question should be closed as a duplicate of this one. The other question lacks context and research. – JJJ Jun 25 '18 at 06:17
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    @JJJ the answers on the older question are much better though. There's no comparison. – Mari-Lou A Jun 25 '18 at 09:13
  • Yoichi, I hope the Google Ngram results that you speak of do not refer to the number 86 in isolation. The vast majority of instances will refer to the mathematical number and NOT to its slang meaning. – Mari-Lou A Jun 25 '18 at 09:14
  • Mari-Lou A. I wonder how meaningfhul 86 is as a mathmatical or scientific term. – Yoichi Oishi Jun 25 '18 at 09:24
  • I don't understand what you mean. If you type in the numbers 27, 37, 47, 57, 67, 77, and 87 in Google Ngrams, you get this result – Mari-Lou A Jun 25 '18 at 10:49
  • If you look at the results at the bottom of the page, you find instances where 87 refers to the year or just the number https://www.google.com/search?q=%2287%22&tbm=bks&lr=lang_en I think the Ngram you mention in your answer is simply referring to it as a number. – Mari-Lou A Jun 25 '18 at 10:51
  • Then do we have 1,2,3,4 .... to thousands and a, b, c, d, ...., A,B, C, D, ... to Z and other random combinations of numbers like 86 on Ngram, though I don't feel like trying? – Yoichi Oishi Jun 25 '18 at 12:20
  • @Mari-LouA This seems to be a better answer https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/06/a-restaurant-eighty-sixed-sarah-huckabee-sanders-what-does-that-mean/563588/ especially concerning how "86" started to be applied to people. – DavePhD Jun 25 '18 at 19:16

1 Answers1

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eighty six, an article from WorldWideWords is revealing. Origins vary from a bar, a drunk, restaurant practices, British shipping, a New York streetcar or just a rhyme?

And here's another reference to Chumley's Bar and "no more for you." urban dictionary

And the etymology of eighty six: to eliminate ~1936. My sense is of origin lies here, and the other posted references lend 'color'.

lbf
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