Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. Slang To refuse to serve (an unwelcome customer) at a bar or restaurant.
- v. To throw out; eject.
- v. To throw away; discard.
Wiktionary
- n. The cardinal number immediately following eighty-five and preceding eighty-seven.
- v. colloquial To cancel an order for food.
- v. colloquial To remove an item from the menu.
- v. colloquial To remove or eject, as a disruptive customer
- v. colloquial To throw out; discard.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. being six more than eighty
Etymologies
- Unknown for certain. Possibly rhyming slang for nix ("cancel, say no to") (given by the OED), or possibly part of a code of such numbers, created in the 1920s. (Wiktionary)
- Perhaps after Chumley's bar and restaurant at 86 Bedford Street in Greenwich Village, New York City. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The completed design uses eighty-six containers of various sizes that were retrofitted into bedrooms and bolted together onsite.”
“I wish I could have gone but, honestly, at eighty-six that man wears me out.”
“Hennie Comfort is eighty-six and has lived in the mountains of Middle Swan, Colorado since before it was Colorado.”
“Today dad is eighty-six years old, and spends most of his day trying to read the newspaper and understanding it.”
“Lima, now eighty-six, described the incident during an interview at his home in East Providence this summer.”
“In 2006 some eighty-six evangelical leaders signed a statement saying, "Millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors.”
The Huffington Post: Victor Stenger: Global Warming and Religion
“Brown corduroy, the earflaps tied on top, the same size cap he bought when he was young, but at eighty-six”
“With the publication of White House Diary, Carter, who will be eighty-six on October 1, clearly hopes to move up on the charts.”
The Huffington Post: Glenn C. Altschuler: Jimmy Carter's Last Campaign
“One winter on the Koyokuk it went to eighty-six below," Joy answered.”
“To be more precise, recent studies suggest that the Revolutionary Tribunal had pronounced 267 sentences of this sort, 181 of which were for hoarding or for failure to respect the maximum, and eighty-six for passing counterfeit money or for trading in assignats.”
The Huffington Post: Lyric Hughes Hale: Why the Bankers Aren't In Jail
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘eighty-six’.
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Idioms, euphemisms, etc.
deep-six, cut to the chase, to feel one's oats, raison d'être, shag, total snooze, to lash out, corner stone, to put out, butt out, brownnoser, cliffhanger and 2 more...
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spicolli's Words
terrapin, ravenous, fuck, sepulchral, garlic, suss, queer, curmudgeon, foodie, intricate, omphalos, subversion and 534 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for eighty-six.
asativum (v.) To nix or deep-six something.
Jan 17, 2008