James Comey is accused of calling for Trump’s death – but what does ‘86’ really mean?

The former FBI director James Comey has said it did not occur to him that that the numbers 8647 – which he spotted spelled out in seashells on a beach, and posted on social media – could be interpreted as a call to assassinate the president, as many supporters of Donald Trump have claimed.

The controversy revolves around the meaning of 86, which is common slang for stopping or getting rid of something, typically old equipment; not serving someone, for example in a restaurant; being ejected from somewhere, such as a bar; or, in a military context, stopping a plan or mission. (The number 47 could be understood to indicate Trump, the 47th president.) Merriam-Webster notes that 86 has very occasionally been used to mean “to kill” but said it did not endorse that meaning “due to its relative recency and sparseness of use”.

There are differing etymologies of where the term “86” or to be “86’d” originates. The most common origin story involves Chumley’s, a prohibition-era bar at 86 Barrow Street in New York’s West Village. The bar had two entrances, one on Barrow and another via Bedford, and “86” referred to the address of the door from which intoxicated or unruly guests would be ejected.

A different version of the story, narrated by author Jef Klein in The History and Stories of the Best Bars of New York, says that when “the cops would very kindly call ahead before a [Prohibition-era] raid, they’d tell the bartender to ‘86’ his customers, meaning they should exit via the 86 Bedford door” while cops came in through the Barrow Street entrance.

But there are other origin stories for being “86’d”, according to Merriam-Webster, including lunch-counter slang for being all out of a dish. Newspaper scribe Walter Winchell used it in a column in 1933, where it was presented as part of a “glossary of soda-fountain lingo”.

Other theories revolve around a US navy logistical coding system for materials in stock, designated by allowance type (AT). Equipment on a warship set to be upgraded or disposed of was given the code AT-6, or phonetically “eighty-six”.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first use of “86” dates to a 1944 book about the movie star and notorious drinker, John Barrymore. “There was a bar in the Belasco building … but Barrymore was known in that cubby as an ‘eighty-six’. An ‘eighty-six’, in the patois of western dispensers, means: ‘Don’t serve him.’”

Newsweek also claimed that the term “86” is used by some in the mafia to mean taking someone “eight miles out of town” and putting them “six feet under”. That concurs with Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, which says that, among many other readings, “to 86” can also means “to kill, to murder; to execute judicially”, likely referring to the size of a standard grave being “8 feet long and 6 feet deep”.

The number 86 has also been used by Republicans calling for the impeachment of Joe Biden – for example, T-shirts sold on Amazon reading “8646”, indicating a call to impeach Biden (the 46th president) – with some liberals accusing the right of deliberately misunderstanding Comey’s intent to score political points.