WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Department of Justice filed new criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey related to a picture he posted on Instagram last year. The post showed seashells arranged to spell "86 47."

Comey said it did not occur to him that the numbers "86 47" could be interpreted as a call to assassinate the president. T-shirts sold on Amazon read "8646," indicating a call to impeach President Joe Biden.

According to Merriam-Webster, the slang term "86" means stopping or getting rid of something, not serving someone, being ejected, or stopping a plan or mission. The term has occasionally been used to mean "to kill," but that meaning is not endorsed due to its relative recency and sparseness of use, according to Merriam-Webster. The term "86'd" originated as lunch-counter slang for being all out of a dish, according to Merriam-Webster.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites a 1944 book about John Barrymore as containing the first use of "86," defining "eighty-six" to mean "Don't serve him." According to Cassell's Dictionary of Slang, "to 86" can mean "to kill, to murder; to execute judicially," probably referring to a grave size of eight feet long and six feet deep.

In 1933, newspaper columnist Walter Winchell used "86" in a column as part of a glossary of soda-fountain lingo. One origin story traces "86" to Chumley's bar at 86 Barrow Street in New York's West Village, where intoxicated or unruly guests were ejected through the Barrow Street door. Another origin story holds that during prohibition-era raids, police instructed bartenders to "86" customers, meaning they should exit via the Bedford Street door. A separate theory attributes the origin to a U.S. Navy logistical coding system where equipment marked AT-6 was phonetically "eighty-six."