In promising to investigate James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, Trump administration officials pointed to his apparent reference to a slang term on Instagram, describing it as a call for the president’s assassination.
Mr. Comey’s photo showed shells on a beach arranged to spell “86 47” with the caption: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” The “47” was presumed to refer to President Trump, the United States’ 47th president, and “86” is a term commonly used by restaurants to signify when they are out of a menu item, or by bars and in military and intelligence circles to throw something — or someone — out.
But in some contexts, the term has evolved to mean something more sinister: to eliminate or kill.
According to lexicologists, the term “86” began as diner shorthand in the early 20th century.
“In the ’30s and ’40s, there were numerical codes used in diners,” said Jesse Sheidlower, an adjunct professor at Columbia University whose specialty is slang. “Eighty-one is a glass of water, 82 is two glasses of water, 89 is a pretty girl, and 86 means you’re out of something.”
Even today, it is not unusual to see the number 86 on a menu chalkboards in the dining room and white boards in kitchens.
Slang definitions tend to slide around, though, and terms can mean different things depending on who is using them.
The most common modern usage of “86” is as a verb, meaning to throw out, dismiss or eject. Customers who are tossed out of an establishment for being too drunk, having a history of walking out on the check or generally acting obnoxious, for example, are said to be 86’d.
And like many slang terms having to do with disappearance, “86” has evolved in some contexts to refer to deliberate elimination. This is the sense the noir crime writer James Ellroy meant when he wrote, in his 2021 novel “Widespread Panic,” “it all got tangled up, and poor Janey got 86’d’.”
“Yes, it can mean ‘to murder,’” Mr. Sheidlower added. “But without any very specific indication that that’s the intended meaning, you’d never assume that. The notion that Comey was suggesting this is completely preposterous.”
Still, Mr. Trump and his top advisers interpreted Mr. Comey’s post in that light, even though he subsequently asserted that he “didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence” and took down the initial photo.
The pair have a tangled history, dating to Mr. Comey’s decision in 2017 to announce that the F.B.I. was investigating the 2016 Trump campaign and whether it had colluded with Russia to influence the election. Mr. Trump fired him months later.
An inspector general’s report later found Mr. Comey had violated department policies with how he handled memos he took of his conversations with Mr. Trump before his firing, but he was never charged. Mr. Trump also accused Mr. Comey of treason.
When Mr. Trump learned in 2019 that the Justice Department would not file charges against Mr. Comey, he called one aide after another, asking if they agreed with him that Mr. Comey should have been prosecuted. Mr. Trump became so enraged over that decision, as well as other matters, that he took the TV remote control in his private dining room and threw it at a credenza along a wall, according to reporting in the book “Confidence Man.”
In a Fox News interview on Friday, Mr. Trump still appeared to harbor ill will toward Mr. Comey. Criticizing him as a “dirty cop,” the president accused Mr. Comey of having called for his offing.
“He wasn’t very competent but he was competent enough to know what that meant,” Mr. Trump said in an excerpt of a Fox News interview that was to be broadcast on Friday night. He added: “He’s calling for the assassination of the president.”
In his second Instagram post, Mr. Comey said he had assumed the shells spelled out “a political message.” But Mr. Trump’s officials doubled down. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, pointed out during a Fox News interview late Thursday that Mr. Comey had spent his entire career prosecuting the kind of mobsters and gangsters who would commonly use “86” in its most deadly sense, as she accused him of “issuing a hit on President Trump.”
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, wrote on social media that Mr. Comey had “just called for the assassination” of the president, and said that her department and the Secret Service had launched an investigation. In a separate post, Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, said his agency would “provide all necessary support.”
“Green’s Dictionary of Slang” cites the first definition of “86” as the restaurant usage, and gives “to kill, murder; to execute judicially” as the second meaning.
“It broadly means unavailability and thus ending,” Mr. Sheidlower said, noting that murderous connotations can attach to almost any slang term having to do with disappearance. “‘End’ itself can be used to mean ‘to kill.’ ”
Slippery meanings are an inherent danger of slang, which can mean different things depending on who’s using it.
“There can be ambiguity because what other people think and what you think don’t have to match,” Mr. Sheidlower said. “That’s the problem with language.”
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
Pete Wells was the restaurant critic for The Times from 2012 until 2024. He was previously the editor of the Food section.
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