A jargon code is at the center of the political excitement surrounding the ousted Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) James Comey, but "86" is an old, restaurant-style sign that something is missing, and has now led to accusations from ruling Republicans that it is a threat to the life of United States President (US) Donald Trump.
In a since-deleted Instagram post, Comey wrote on Thursday that he had found a "great formation of shells on the beach" and posted a photo of the shells in the shapes of the numbers "86" and "47." In a subsequent post, he explained that the sight he had come across was someone's political message created by arranging the shells since Trump is the 47th president, and that "86" meant getting rid of something, such as a violent bar patron or something that was no longer wanted.
Trump and other Republicans took it more sinisterly: they say that Comey, with whom Trump had a falling out, used the message to advocate violence against the president because that code has sometimes been used as a signal to assassinate someone.
The origins of the "86" code go back to codes used in restaurant messages for staff in the 1930s, said Jesse Shadelower, of Columbia University and former editor-in-chief of the Oxford English Dictionary.
This meant that something was missing from the menu, and over time, the use of that label expanded, he said.
He explained that "86 means something that is not there, something that should not be there like an unwanted customer. Then it also became a verb, meaning: to throw someone out. That's a pretty obvious and clear semantic development."
He said that it has been used as a euphemism for murder in some fiction stories, but that the use of that label is not nearly as widespread.
More likely, it means discarding something that is no longer useful - this was parodied in the popular 1960s TV show "Get Smart" whose main character was known as "Agent 86".
The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that "86" means "to throw out," "to get rid of," or "to refuse a favor." Although it is mentioned that it has been used in the sense of killing, the dictionary states: "We do not enter into that sense because it is recent and rarely used."
But Trump and his administration insist that was precisely the intention of Comey's initial post.
"He knew exactly what it meant," Trump himself said during an interview with "Fox News" on Friday. "And the kids know what it means. If you're the director of the FBI and you don't know what it means, it means: assassination. And it says it clearly."
The relationship between the president and Comey has been strained for years. Trump fired Comey as FBI director in 2017, early in Trump's first term, and Comey wrote in a 2018 book that Trump was behaving "unethically and out of touch with the truth."
Nicole Holliday, from the University of California, Berkeley, said it's not surprising that a jargon term can cause upset, especially not at a time like now in the US where "everything has become hyper-partisan, polarized, everything is a Rorschach test."
She also said: "We are very sensitive to any indication that some people are with us or not."
Language can be a difficult topic because the meaning of words can be variable based on context or culture or other factors, she said.
It's hard enough in a face-to-face conversation, but it's even harder online: "When you're talking to someone, you're 'negotiating' the meaning, but when someone posts something online, there's no room for negotiation. That's why people argue endlessly in the comments on some posts," said Holiday.
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