The Guardian looks at the nonsensical claim that a former director of the FBI is calling for the assassination of a president: “What does ‘86’ really mean?”
Or more precisely, what can it mean? The Guardian presents a number of meanings and a number of origin stories, though the origin that Merriam-Webster considers most likely is missing: “a rhyming slang word for nix, which means ‘to veto’ or ‘to reject.’” I think it’s an awake, aware person who suggests that we veto or reject the number 47 before we slide into autocracy for keeps.
I always associate the other number, as a numeral or spelled out, with Tom Waits. It appears in his song “Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)”:
I’ve been eighty-sixed from your schemeIt’s almost fifty years since I bought Nighthawks at the Dinner, and I still don’t know who Susan Michelson was. Tom? Anyone?
Now I’m in a melodramatic nocturnal scene
Oh, now I know: a girlfriend.
Related reading
All OCA Tom Waits posts (Pinboard)
That’s funny because I thought first of a song too, Louis Jordan’s “Boogie Woogie Blue Plate”:
ReplyDelete"Draw one, draw two, get that coffee perkin'
Draw three, you better make it four, hold that mayo on the chopped egg workin'
One a tuna wheat with a side of fries
86 on the cherry pies
Side of greens on the franks and beans
And a boogie woogie blue plate
Boogie woogie blue plate”
I hear “drawer,” as in cash register drawer, not “draw,” but I’m not sure
Man, all that diner lingo! It’s gotta be “draw,” as in the Ink Spots’ “Jave Jive”: “A slice of onion and a raw one. Draw one. / Waiter, waiter, percolator.”
ReplyDeletethe interesting thing about the story is that he saw this on a beach from what i have read. i want to see the photo. i always understood eighty-six to mean dump it in the trash. you take the project and chuck it in the trash, you quit working on it.
ReplyDeletek
Yes, it has a number of meanings. Here's one source for the photo:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.newsweek.com/james-comey-deletes-post-depicting-8647-after-backlash-online-2073031
My first 86 was Agent 86 from “Get Smart.”
ReplyDeleteAnd I bet that lots of us kids had no idea at the time why that was his number.
ReplyDeleteTry amateur radio codes. 86 is over and out.
ReplyDeleteThanks for adding that one.
ReplyDeleteI'm re-reading Pynchon's Vineland and just came across a reference to "summary octogenarihexation."
ReplyDeleteHa! I think that’s a word Tom Waits would like.
ReplyDelete