Federal prosecutors say former FBI Director James Comey's use of the term “86” on Instagram was a threat “to do harm" to President Donald Trump — but some food service workers say the term is "everyday lingo" to them.
"It’s probably the most overused word in hospitality," said Mike Reyes, 45, who has worked in the hospitality industry for years, currently as an operational excellence consultant at FLIK Hospitality Group.
"Any time you're out of anything, it's 86-ed" — meaning it's unavailable and needs to be replenished or replaced — he said, adding that he first heard the term when he started his first restaurant job at age 14.
It's now also the centerpiece of a federal indictment against Comey in North Carolina. He has been charged with two counts of threatening the president's life by posting a picture of seashells on the beach last year that had been arranged to read “86 47.”
The indictment said “a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret” Comey's post “as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to President Trump.”
David Brungoli, the owner and chef at Pavin 86, an upscale New York City Italian eatery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, called that interpretation "ridiculous."
He said he added the number to the eatery’s name because of its location — East 86th Street — and its longtime ties to the restaurant industry.
“It connects with restaurants,” he said.
“The term ‘86,’ we use only when the staff runs out of an item,” Brungoli said, and it has “been used forever.”
He said he never equated the term with death or murder.
“If it’s 86, the next day we order more. It’s 86 for now,” he said.
Reyes said he was surprised by the charge, as well. "It's weird, because it’s a term used so often and without malice," he said.
He said he had heard the term used in relation to people before, but only in a joking manner. "We’d have that as a joke. 'Where’s Raoul? He got 86ed' — meaning he got fired or died," he said.
John Coppola, a chef who runs Bread & Spread Sandwich in Brooklyn, New York, said he’s unsure of the origin of the term, but he’s always heard it to be used as meaning they’re out of something, or we “should get rid of something.”
“If the chef didn’t like” how a dish came out, “he’d say 86 it, meaning make it disappear.”
“It can be a noun, a verb, future tense, past tense, like ‘we’ll make it this until Friday and then we 86 it,’” he said.
Coppola added that he sees how the term can be viewed as a threat.
“In my world, it’s not a death threat, but I think it can be perceived as that in someone else’s eyes,” he said.
“If you’re 86ing a person, it’s final," he added. "There’s no coming back tomorrow.”
The origins of the term are hazy, but it appears to have first been used in New York City.
Nicole Holliday, a professor of linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley, said it has been around since at least the 1930s, when it was used to note when an item was sold out at a soda fountain.
Another origin story credited the term to a restaurant called Delmonico's, where a popular steak that was the 86th item on the menu would quickly sell out. Yet another claims it originated at a speakeasy called Chumley's, which had multiple entrances, including one at 86 Bedford St. When police would raid it during Prohibition, customers were told to “86” it — leave through the Bedford Street side. Chumley's closed in 2007, and the space later reopened as a steakhouse called The Eighty Six.
Reyes said he'd heard it was a military term for something that was out of commission.
In a 2019 article in St. Louis Magazine, dining editor George Mahe compiled a list of almost 20 different versions of how the term originated.
Holliday said the term was also used in the 1930s and the ’50s to describe bar customers who’d been cut off from drinking more or kicked out of an establishment, and it is still used that way, as well. Merriam-Webster defines the term as slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.”
Trump offered reporters in the Oval Office another definition Wednesday.
"Well, if anybody knows anything about crime, they know 86 — you know what 86 — it’s a mob term for kill him. You know? You ever see the movies? ‘86 him,’ the mobster says to one of his wonderful associates, ‘86 him.’ That means 'kill him.' It’s, I think of it as a mob term," he said.
"People think of it as something having to do with disappearing, but the mob uses that term to say when they want to kill somebody. They say, ‘86 the son of a gun.’ I’m trying to keep the language nice and clear. They don’t use that term 'son of a gun.' They use another term, but that’s a mob term for kill."
Zach Jensen, content development manager for the Mob Museum in Las Vegas, said he's not aware of the term's being used in mob movies, but there's a line in the film "Casino" in which Joe Pesci's character talks about bodies being buried in the desert on the outskirts of the city.
"There's this rumor that 86 means driving 80 miles out and burying a body 6 feet under. Another is 8 miles out and 6 feet under," he said, but "it's, like, a modern urban legend."
"That’s part of mob lore in Las Vegas," but there's not "any documented evidence of the term emanating with organized crime," Jensen said.
“86-ing somebody has been used as a reference to murder in the late ’60s and ’70s,” but it wasn't common, and it didn't begin there, he said.
"It's mainly used as a metaphor, to get rid of something, and some take it to mean more than that," he said.
He added that "we use it at our speakeasy" in the museum "when we run out of something."
