Yesterday, on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell (April 30, 2026), O’Donnell argued that because the dictionary definition of “86” does not include the meaning “to kill,” the term has never taken on that sense in slang.
He quoted Merriam-Webster’s definition in the video clip below. However, what he failed to mention is that the same dictionary acknowledges the meaning “to kill,” even if it does not fully include it as a formal entry because of its relative recency and limited use. Merriam-Webster even provides an example of “86” being used to mean “kill” as far back as 1991, including in military jargon for “killed in action.”
O’Donnell said:
Here is Oscar winner Robert De Niro proving in his own way that Donald Trump is lying once again.
Then he played Robert De Niro speaking in Goodfellas in 1990:
They whacked him. They fucking whacked him.
O’Donnell continued:
They whacked him — not they 86’d him — in the Oscar-nominated script of Goodfellas written by Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese.
Not a single mob guy uses the term 86 for anything. It appears Donald Trump was hate-watching this program last night when I once again read Merriam-Webster’s explanation of the etymology of the slang use of 86.
Quote. 86 is slang meaning to throw out, to get rid of, or to refuse service to. It comes from 1930s soda counter slang, meaning that an item was sold out.
Friends of mine who worked in restaurants and are currently working in restaurants have been texting me to say that they use 86 all the time to mean they have run out of something.
In 1933, in Walter Winchell’s column he wrote, 86 means all out of it. But after this program last night, Donald Trump took to social media to try to help prosecute James Comey by writing, quote, 86 is a mob term for kill him. They say 86 him! 86 47 means kill President Trump.
We patiently await Donald Trump producing the FBI wiretaps of mob guys saying 86. None of the FBI wiretaps that I’ve ever listened to have mob guys included the term 86 in anything they were talking about, including killing people.
Donald Trump is now trying to co-prosecute the criminal case against James Comey by inventing dialogue.
Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyer — who won him 34 guilty verdicts in a Manhattan criminal trial for business fraud in his payoff scheme to porn star Stormy Daniels — is now Donald Trump’s acting Attorney General who in a desperate attempt to win a nomination from Donald Trump to become the actual Attorney General, he has humiliated himself by obtaining the goofiest federal indictment in history, charging James Comey with threatening the life of the President by posting on Instagram this photograph of terrifying seashells…
O’Donnell loves bringing up those 34 guilty verdicts. But Trump didn’t lose because of the evidence — he lost to a Soros-backed DA (Alvin Bragg), a Democratic judge, and a heavily Democratic jury pool in deep-blue Manhattan, one of the most liberal districts in America.
And the ultimate punchline? Comey wants us to believe those seashells magically arranged themselves into ‘86 47’ on the beach.
Hang on, everyone. The fun is just getting started.
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