Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
slang for "eliminate," 1936, originated at lunch counters, a cook's word for "none" when asked for something not available, probably rhyming slang for nix.
Wiktionary
Etymology 1 card. The cardinal number immediately following eighty-five and preceding eighty-seven. Etymology 2
vb. 1 (context colloquial English) To cancel an order for food. 2 (context colloquial English) To remove an item from the menu. 3 (context colloquial English) To remove or eject, as a disruptive customer 4 (context colloquial English) To throw out; discard.
WordNet
adj. being six more than eighty [syn: 86, lxxxvi]
Usage examples of "eighty-six".
Stanford University psychiatrists divided eighty-six women with metastatic breast cancer into two groups - one in which they were encouraged to examine their fears of dying and to take charge of their lives, and the other given no special psychiatric support.
Foote died in eighty-six, the farm went to his widow, Dorothy Jessica Harrelson Oxidine Pounder Foote.
After topping Ashby Gap, Dan pulled off into the booming metropolis of Paris, Virginia, population about eighty-six.
Stanford University psychiatrists divided eighty-six women with metastatic breast cancer into two groups - one in which they were encouraged to examine their fears of dying and to take charge of their lives, and the other given no special psychiatric support.
All you need to know going in is that Callahan's bar has a fireplace, and a chalk line on the floor about ten meters away, and that patrons who are willing to give up the change from their drink are welcome to toe that line, propose a toast, and eighty-six their empty glass in that fireplace.
He comes around the bar and stomps on it, and kicks it back and forth a few times until it's all tattered and threadbare, and then he ties a clove hitch in the thing and eighty-sixes it.
None of this, Zilin knew, was a cure for the degenerative disease he had, but at his age, which was now nearing eighty-six, that did not matter much.