FW: eighty-six or 86; short-order cookery language

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 7/1/07, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> At 9:35 AM -0500 7/1/07, Cohen, Gerald Leonard wrote:
> >I'm presently away from my reference books, but IIRC there's an
> >explanation given in an American Speech article which derives this
> >86 from the number of stories in the Empire State building. I know
> >the number of stories is now considered to be 102, but somehow it
> >was once considered to be 86. (Maybe the very top of the building
> >has something to do with the discrepancy.)
>
> The open observation deck was on the 86th floor (still is, for all I
> know), so effectively that was the top for purposes of viewing the
> city at one's leisure, for looking through those binocular machines
> that one put a nickel into (or was it a dime?  memory fails), and
> from which one pondered whether it was really possible to kill
> someone by dropping a penny on their head.  (Young whippersnappers we
> were.)  We all knew there were 102 stories, but the 86th floor was
> the relevant top for most purposes.
>
> I have no idea whether this relates at all to the restaurant code.

I concur with Barry on this point. If "86" had an ESB origin, then
surely Walter Winchell would have mentioned it in 1933.

http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/86_not_from_chumleys_or_empire_state_building/


--Ben Zimmer

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