I was poking around a site just now and saw the phrase, “… all non-latin posts will be 86’d…”
It means ‘destroyed,’ right?
Anyway, does anyone know anything about the origin? It’s hard to do a search on the number “86,” so if anyone has some information it would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
It’s origin is restaurant lingo meaning “to remove a dish from the menu”. Somehow it has bled into the common language.
Why restaurants used it to begin with I have no idea.
Restaurants also use it when they’ve run out of something, not just when a particular dish is no longer offered.
Since a link to Cecil has been provided, I’d like to also add that, on the television show Get Smart, Maxwell Smart was Agent 86, which was done on purpose by the creators, Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.
I read somewhere (sorry, no cite) that Brooks said the term was also used to indicate tossing a disruptive drunk from a bar (as in “eighty-six that guy in the checkered sport coat”).
In other words, for the purposes of the television show, the implication was that Agent Smart was “out of it” or persona non grata, even among his peers.
Thanks guys.
** Beeblebrox**, your reply was funny because I had just gotten off the phone with a friend who gave me the exact same answer. He’s kinda crazy (really outlandish. Hard to believe him most of the time) so I turned to the board for a second opinion.
Hmm… I owe him an apology…
**Atreyu[/], thanks for the master’s voice. I swear I did a search on “86,” but because it wasn’t 4 letters long, it rejected the search.
Thanks, DAVEW0071 for the added input. That ‘Get Smart’ trivia will come in handy one day! (it did for you, anyway)
I think the Master needs to take another look. There are many explanations. Cecil didn’t convince me that sounding like “nix” is the answer. Why not 56’d or 66’d or any other six number?
This site lists 10 possibilities (it’s the second question on the page): http://www.dinersoft.com/askdave/davenov00.htm
I had always heard that it was a reference to the F-86 Sabre fighter jet, which turned the tide of the air war in Korea.
Before the F-86, the UN forces had no fighters that could match the MiG-15 in air-to-air combat, and UN airpower took heavy losses as a result. When the first squadron of F-86’s was introduced into combat the playing field was evened and Soviet/Chinese/North Korean pilots got 86’ed on a regular basis. Lots of military terms have found their way into popular speech, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this was just another one.
This story may be considered bullshit if anyone can cite use of the term “eighty-sixed” before late 1950. Otherwise, it’s just as likely as anything else I’ve seen on the subject. I’m amazed that I’m the first to post this…unless someone else beats me to the punch while I type…
I agree with you rsa about Cecil’s answer. That site had some pretty good explainations, and it rated “six rhymes with nix” pretty lame. Who knows, though? I thought the resturant theory was pretty lame, so I came to the board and got the same thing.
Personally, I liked the coffin theory the best (8’ long, 6’ down) because it seems to go along with a similar expression I’ve heard: Deep six’d.
I don’t know. That’s my take.