The OED has always regarded itself as covering US English; when the OED first came out, an official copy was presented to President Harding. If it was mostly a British effort, that was more for reasons of practicality – no Internet then.
Hey Dexter, the comedy club is another URL…try to let the grown ups talk here about real stuff.
I went to Public School No. 86
I won’t say which city though… (although, how many cities have numbered public schools??)
“86” was a code hobos used to chalk on bad restaurants during the '30s, meaning “ate here, sick”. So it came to mean to throw up, then to throw stuff out.
But they were able to get steak somehow or another, with some amount of lead time, right? Maybe you have to place an order a week ahead of time, or a month. Well, if the ribeye is so consistently sold out that its number became slang for “sold out”, then one would think that the restaraunt manager would catch on to that and order that many more ribeyes for the next month. Or, if for some reason they absolutely couldn’t get any more ribeyes, they would have raised the price until demand dropped to what they could keep up with. Given that this restaurant has been around for so long, the folks running had to have had enough business acumen to do one or both of those things.
It should be eighty-sixed or at least 86ed. No apostrophe. Sorry. Pet peeve.
And ditto CD’s versus CDs, FYI.
The OED suggests the etymology as “perh. rhyming slang for nix.” That to me seems the path of least resistance.
Number 86 on Delmonico’s menu…pshaw. Why would Delmonico’s put their signature steak at position number eighty-six??? Riiiiiight…
skidoo I really dont care about your pet peeves about apostrophe’s i know when to use them…i just choose not to
I would like for you to cite your 'source as to where I 'said it was their 'signature di’sh…anyone who ha’s any type of marketing 'sense knows to put the mo’st popular thing where it is not 'seen fir’st ie drug’store’s alway’s have the pharmacy in the very back ,when they have a choice, 'so you have to go through the whole 'store pa’st all the merchandi’se before you can get your medicine.
btw Chronos the first refrigerators that would be practical for use in a restaurant were not around until the 20th century not to mention freezers. The way things worked back then were so different from now…there were no restaurant suppliers…it was the first one in the area so they probably had to order whole cows if they wanted beef so you cant order 15 cows worth of Delmonico steaks and have 1000 pounds of various beef parts sitting around waiting to be used.
Raising the price is a great way to please the customers also…you know…the people who keep you in business.
A guess by the OED (The OED suggests the etymology as “perh. rhyming slang for nix.”) is no more credible than a guess by my dog…its a guess
Ah, yes, another cogent, thoughtful post. I love how we fight ignorance here…
Any moron with half a brain would figure that Delmonico’s would have a marketing reason to perpetuate a myth about the number 86 and slang attributed to it. Best evidence suggests the story is bunk. NOT that Best Evidence appears to worry some around here.
Six rhymes with Nix.
Why 86? Because the item was ate up??
Seems likely to me.
Memo to self: Don’t post after a bad night of bowling…
Your collective pardons, please. :o
I lived in New York for several years, where there was quite a different explanation for “86.” During prohibition, there was a speakeasy called Chumley’s located on the corner of Bedford and Barrow Streets in New York’s West Village neighborhood. It’s still there today, though of course now a legal bar. The main entrance is on Bedford Street, but when the police did whatever prohibition raids they did, everyone had to sneak out the back door, the address for which is 86 Barrow Street. Many New Yorkers know this story, and in fact the place is well-known as the origin of this expression (although I can’t say whether it’s accurate).
OK, let’s suppose that they got 400 orders a month for the steaks, and they only had 200 steaks a month they could sell. Further suppose that the steaks cost the restaraunt 50 cents a piece, and that they sell them for $1. So, you sell 200 steaks, at a profit of 50 cents each, for a hundred bucks profit.
Now suppose you double the price. Some customers refuse to pay two dollars for a steak, but apparently it’s really good steak, so some folks still do pay for it. Roughly, you’ll have half as many people who want to buy your steak. Now, you get 200 orders, and you’re able to fill all 200 of them. You still sell 200 steaks a month. But now, you’re making $1.50 profit on each of them, and you net three hundred bucks profit. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that making 300 dollars profit is more likely to keep you in business than making 100 dollars profit.
I vaguely remember hearing that getting eighty-sixed had something to do with military police and blotter reports or whatnot. It might be an appropriately numbered offense in the UCMJ ? It’s no stretch to imagine a fair number of military personnel have been kicked out of bars over the years. I’ll try to do some digging around, I do remember that it seemed a very logical and self-evident explanation, for what that’s worth, which isn’t much.
I have a copy of “War Slang” by Paul Dickson. Eighty six is not listed (at least as far back as the civil war.
The best information I can find is that it was popularly used at lunch counters in the 30’s and 40’s (“Dictionary of American Slang”). It is listed in the Appendix under rhyming slang (rhymes with nix).
There are other number phrases also used e.g.
ninety-eight - The manager of a lunch counter
ninety-five - a customer
ninety-nine - Babs Feldon - The chief fry cook or soda jerk.
All these phrases are cited from the mid-1930’s. I believe that there is about a 20 year lag between first usage and first citation.
Just a WAG but since this would put it at the end of WWI - could it be a French phrase that was bastardized by returning troops.
Uh…because they put any old steak at number eighty-six and eventually it became their signature dish?
It’s funny, this is the second time I’ve seen an explanation for 86ed that basically said, “Well, we’re not really sure.” I’m fairly surprised at this as the origin is completely obvious to anyone who has ever spent any time in the US Military.
Article 86 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice is Unauthorized Absence. Unauthorized absence is sometimes referred to by saying “Gone UA” or “86’d” for short. Those who watch too many movies will refer to this as being AWOL. Certain articles of the UCMJ are repeatedly and completely drilled into recruit’s heads during their basic training. Essentially the ones that the recruit’s need to know about at the beginning of boot camp; Unauthorized Absence, Assault, Disrespect towards noncommissioned and commissioned officers, etc. The ones that they stand a substantial chance of getting into trouble with.
Within 6 months of joining the military, the slang surrounding these articles become part of the new servicemember’s lexicon. “Where’s Bob and Joe, why aren’t they on duty?” “Dude, they 86’d last night. Haven’t seen them since.” It’s not a big mental jump to start referring to objects other than people disappearing as having 86’d.
It’s not that this saying has some obscure origin in the tomes as history so much as it constantly re-enter’s new servicemembers’ slang with every basic training class.
When was the UCMJ last codified?