eighty-six / 86

2 May 2026

Eighty-six or 86 originated in restaurant slang with the meaning that an item was out of stock. It also came into use as a verb meaning to cancel an order and to eject or not serve a customer. It then passed into general slang to mean to cancel something or kill someone. Why the number eighty-six was chosen is not known. There are number of explanations floating about, but only two are plausible: that it is rhyming slang or that it is simply an arbitrary assignment of a number in a larger numbering scheme.

Use of eighty-six in diner slang meaning out of stock is recorded as early as 1920 in a 22 October article in the Topeka Daily State Journal:

They were breaking in a new waiter at one of the avenue restaurants. He turned in an order for a small steak, to be met with a curt “eighty-six.” The waiter stared at the cook and repeated the order. “Eighty-six, I toldcha,” roared the cook in so belligerent a tone that the waiter wilted. A brother hash-slinger broke it gently to him that in the argot of the restaurant “Eighty-six” means just what “Thirty” does to a printer—“That’s all. No more to come.”

Several years later, George Manker Watters and Arthur Hopkins’s 1927 play Burlesque contains an exchange where a waiter uses eighty-six, but it seems to be in the opposite sense, that of possessing something in short supply, specifically during Prohibition:

WAITER (opening bottles)—If you need any Scotch or gin, sir.
SKID—Yeah, I know.
WAITER—My number is Eighty-six.
SKID—That’s just Lefty’s age.
LEFTY (stirring in his doze—Ah, you big bum, why don’t you go to bed?
SKID (pays WAITER)—Keep the change.
WAITER—Thank you, sir. Thank you very much, and my number is…
SKID (up at table)—Yeah. Eighty-six. I know (WAITER exits. SKID draws enormous flask from pocket.) Do you want yours straight or highball, Mazie?

Researcher Barry Popik has found two other early uses. The first is in a 10 June 1929 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article:

The Soda Jerkers’ Code

The young bartenders in one of those big soda emporiums downtown have a secret code. They use it in relaying orders behind the bar. It works much like the waitress’ “Two on a raft!” when she means poached eggs on toast.

When “Burn one!” for instance, is hollered fore and aft, it means the customer’s tongue is hanging out for a chocolate malted milk. Other signals we learned to identify at the rist of indigestion and strawberry rash are:

“Shake one!” (Chocolate milk shake.)
“Shoot one!” (Small coca cola.)
“Stretch one!” (Large coca cola.)
“Ten!” (Root beer.)
“Twenty-one!” (Limeade.)
“Thirty-one!” (Lemonade.)
“Forty-one!” (Orangeade.)
“Fifty-one! (Hot chocolate.)
“Eighty-six! (All out.)
“Eighty-nine!” (Look at the legs under the table.)

The second is in a Walter Winchell newspaper column from 23 May 1933 with a nationwide audience:

A Hollywood soda-jerker forwards this glossary of soda-fountain lingo out there... “Shoot one” and Draw one” is one coke and one coffee... “Shoot one in the red!” means a cherry coke... An “echo” is a repeat order... “Eighty-six” means all out of it... “Eighty-one” is a glass of water... “Thirteen” means one of the big bosses is drifting around... A “red ball” is an orangeade.

By 1947 eighty-six had become a verb meaning to cancel, as can be seen by this item in the 5 February 1947 issue of Variety—a publication famed for its use of slangy headlines—which also shows the term had moved beyond the food service industry:

Jeffries Eighty-Sixed?

Hollywood, Feb. 4.

Disk jockeys test their weight tonight when vocalist, Herb Jeffries, is named initial candidate for jockey’s nix list. He failed to show as promised to substitute for Bob McLaughlin, ill, on pilot’s daily show over KLAC, here. McLaughlin will ask his fellows to play no more Jeffries platters, and has had it indicated by organization sparkers, Bill Anson and Peter Potter that they’ll press the measure at regular meeting tonight.

And by 1978, the meaning of the verb had was also in use to mean to kill a person, as can be seen in this 15 March 1978 Los Angeles Times article about a left-wing activist who had been believed dead turning up alive and well and married to an undercover policewoman:

When later informed by a reporter that official records showed Dial and Miss Milazzo were married, Wells, one of his closest friends’ [sic] expressed mild surprise.

“At least it suggests that the police haven’t 86ed (disposed of) him,” Wells said. “But it still doesn’t resolve the question of whether he was a cop. We’d all like to know.

Various explanations have been put forward for the term. The most plausible is that it is rhyming slang for nix. The only issue with this explanation is the existence of a more comprehensive numbering scheme, as evidenced by the 1929 and 1933 citations. The larger scheme suggests the assignment of this meaning to eighty-six is arbitrary.

Most of the other proffered explanations aren’t worth discussing as there is no evidence to support them, but there is one that comes up so frequently that it needs to be mentioned. This explanation holds that eighty-six comes from Chumley’s Bar at 86 Bedford Street in Manhattan. Chumley’s opened as a Prohibition-era speakeasy in 1922—two years after eighty-six is recorded in print—and closed its doors for the last time in 2020, a victim of the Covid-19 pandemic. The explanation is clearly an after-the-fact attempt to make sense of an arcane term.

Sources:

Danver, Charles F. “Pittsburghesque.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,” 10 June 1929, 8/6. Newspapers.com.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, accessed 2 May 2026, s.v. eighty-six, adj., eighty-six, v.

“Jeffries Eighty-Sixed?” Variety, 5 February 1947, 46. ProQuest.

Lighter, J. E. Historical Dictionary of American Slang, vol. 1 of 2. New York: Random House: 1994, s.v. eighty-six.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1989 (modified June 2025), s.v. eighty-six, n.

Popik, Barry (@barrypopik.bsky.social), Bluesky, 1 May 2026.

Rosenzweig, Dave. “Vanished Leftist Believed Allive, Wed.” Los Angeles Times, 15 March 1978, 1, 26/3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Snap Shots.” Topeka Daily State Journal (Kansas), 22 October 1920, 6/4. Library of Congress: Chronicling America.

Watters, George Manker and Arthur Hopkins. Burlesque (1927). In Burns Mantle, ed. The Best Plays of 1927–28. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1928, Act 2, 122–45 at 135. Archive.org.

Winchell, Walter. “On Broadway” (syndicated column). Times-Union (Albany, New York), 23 May 1933, 8. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Image credit: NBC Television, 1965. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.