It’s a bit like Polari. I’m gay, and discovered it around the time of Stonewall. At the time it was common to throw in a Polari expression, if you were in the life and you were also in the know. Just by saying “bona” instead of “good” you were literally asking the person you were talking to if they were “in the life.” If you got a blank stare at an expression, that person might get upset if you hit on them.
Morrissey cops Polari expressions all the time – he named a compilation “Bona Drag” which means snappy clothing. The effects of liberation were not immediate as I’m sure you know, so for years I and my husband would speak in Polari in public whenever we were guy watching, so no one actually knew what we were saying. A lot of Polari expressions don’t add brevity but the point is not to have clarity.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, it’s genuine curiosity - and I may be about to make myself look very foolish. You didn’t mention (nor did a couple of later posters) that “86” is an example of that rarest of things, American Rhyming Slang (“nix”).
Is this something which is well known? (In which case I look very foolish) Little known? Or not worth mentioning/something else?
Like I said, genuine inquiry about an interesting example of slang.
I recall it from a TV interview with Jonathon Green. He’s no slouch, etymologically, and he stated it with authority. (Of course, you can’t really say “as fact” in these circumstances.)
Let’s call it a credible theory. Well/widely known in the US?
j
ETA: Hah! I was unaware that there was a column on it. Foolish enough, then.
I took an upper division American Folklore class in 1971(?), and the prof had written his dissertation on diner slang from some place in Kansas where he was living at the time (maybe ten years earlier). The only phrase I remember him mentioning was “Adam and Eve on a raft” (poached eggs on toast…as you explain in a later post), with the addendum of “Wreck 'em” of you wanted them scrambled.
I lived in London and Rhyming Slang was part of everyday speech, but it was usually truncated, leaving out the word that rhymed - “Eh! Speak up, I’m a bit Mutton”, or “Give us a bell on the dog”. “Use your loaf” is so common as to be barely recognisable as rhyming slang, but it was originally “loaf of bread” = head. Likewise - He’s telling porkies about how he came by that new whistle.
The case against it consists mainly of two negatives: not even a single piece of real evidence can be found to support it and no other example of numeric restaurant slang (of which there is plenty) is known to have a rhyming origin.
The only factual thing to be said is: nobody knows.
I believe part of it is to avoid confusion/mistakes, but perhaps through evolution. It’s somewhat like the foxtrot alphabet, each is unique enough that the meaning is clear even if it’s longer to say. And that may have been a happy side effect of using colorful language, the ones that work are continued and encourages new ones.
I remember in the interview I saw with Jonathon Green he gave four examples. We now have three of them - and I can’t for the life of me remember the fourth.
