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

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 6/30/07, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Is it true that "86" began life as rhyming slang for "nix" or for "86
> (=) nix, nix," as I actually saw it put, somewhere or other, many
> years ago.

It's a popular theory, but I tend to doubt it. We know (thanks to
Barry) that the "86" code has been around since at least 1933, but the
rhyming-slang explanation shows up much later. (Alan Dundes traces the
etymology to Wentworth & Flexner 1967 -- I haven't seen it earlier
than that.) The "86" code shows up on lists of many seemingly
arbitrary numbers in sources from the '30s, so why should "86" be the
only one with a nonarbitrary origin? Further casting the "nix" theory
into doubt is that "87" rather than "86" shows up with the meaning
'out of an item on the menu' in at least one early source:

-----
Los Angeles Times, Jan 9, 1938, p. J2
Have you ever heard the soda clerks shouting numbers to each other? Here
are a few which we recently persuaded a nimble-fingered mixer to translate
for us:
"81" -- water for the customer.
"61" -- cup of coffee.
"87" -- we've run out of that item on the menu.
"37" -- take special pains for this customer.
"Watch the pump" -- the girl you're serving has pretty eyes.
"Stretch it" -- give this man a big one; he looks hungry.
"87 1/2" -- the girl in the corner has pretty legs.
-----

More discussion in this 2005 thread:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0503d&L=ads-l&P=23786


--Ben Zimmer

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