86 It or You’ve Been 86'ed! What Does That Mean?
Where did this come from?
This was part of the “hash house” or “lunch house” jargon. It started at Chumley’s Restaurant at 86 Bedford Street in New York City. Before the 1930’s, it became jargon of the waitresses and countermen who worked at diners.
It means “to throw it out.” It started by throwing out rowdy customers through the back door. Now it could mean anything that is either deleted, trashed, or forgotten and of no use.
It was a regular daily thing for the waitresses to holler out orders to the cook so that he got descriptive orders. It’s highly likely that many, maybe most, of the servers as well as the cooks, were unable to read and write.
For instance:
~two poached eggs on toast with a glass of milk = Adam and Eve on a raft with moo juice
~a toasted English muffin and coffee = burn the British and Joe
Most of the colorful language is gone now unless you run a diner that has a nostalgic theme. Here are a few more examples:
Axle grease: butter
Blowout patches: pancakes
Bowwow, barks, or groundhog: hot dog
Baled hay: shredded wheat
Bessie: roast beef
Bessie in a bowl: stew
