GETTING HEP—NUMERICALLY

WHAT WITH POPE LEO XIV ACKNOWLEDGING 6-7 and all of us knowing 86-47, this got me interested in getting hep numerically. I cite Smoky Hill Museum for its “1920s Slang” and its “Slanguage of the 1930s.” There’s also the University of Oregon’s “Slang of the 1920’s.” And my old-fashioned printed source (it’s called a “book”): Dictionary of American Slang, by Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner, Thomas Y. Crowell Publishers, 1975. 

As they usta say, “He knows his onions,” even ones that aren’t associated with numbers (but are too good to ignore here). 

Apple Annie. From the Smoky Hills Museum’s 1930s:  “A woman who sold apples on the street to make ends meet.” By the way, Daughter Suz recently saw “a charming little lemonade stand. Good thing there was no kid there both times I drove by, because the lemonade cost @2.99 a cup.” I wonder whether the kid accepts Venmo.

Hoover Flags. “Empty pockets turned inside out.”

Big Four. Of Hobo/Dust Bowl origin: “a duck-egg omelet, made with 4 eggs, 4 slices of bacon, and 4 potatoes.” 

86. Soda Fountain talk dating from the 1930s: “An expression indicating that a restaurant or soda fountain is out of an item; or, a customer to be refused service.” Wentworth and Flexner amplify about an undesirable customer “who is not served liquor, as in a bar, because he is or will become drunk and/or disorderly…. All uses because the term rhymes with ‘nix.’ ” There is no mention of criminal action.

14.  Wentworth and Flexner also cite “14” as “a special order. Some c1930 lunch-counter use.”

Big Six. From the University of Oregon National Council of Teachers of English: “A strong man; from auto advertising for the new and powerful six-cylinder engines.”

Hit on All Sixes. Along the same lines: “to perform 100 percent; as in ‘all six cylinders.’ ”

13. Be aware of hearing “13” as a warning for “the boss is roaming around.” 

You can bet those bosses never displayed Hoover flags, though they probably voted for him.

12-hour Leggings. Wentworth and Flexner describe these accessories as “Puttees, esp. as worn by timekeepers and foremen. Contemptuous use by laborers and hobos.”

34. If your laboring happened to be in a shoe store, you’d use “34!” to mean “Go Away!” Wentworth and Flexner describe this as “Said to another salesman who is interfering with a sale.”

30. This usta be “the last character to signify the end of a telegraph message; hence the end of a newspaper correspondent’s dispatch; later, used to signify the end of a newspaper article, then a radio newscaster’s broadcast.”  Bill Stern would conclude with “That’s 30!”

69. Wentworth and Flexner cite: “(taboo) Simultaneous cunnilingus and fellatio. From the positions of participants, end to end like ’69.’ May have entered U.S. slang from the older French ‘six-à-neuf.’ ”

This citation brings two funny stories to mind: The first, heard years ago on late-night radio: “Two British soldiers get off the boat in Calais and one asks, ‘Eh, mate, ow’yer say six-à-neuf ’round ‘ere?’ ”

The other comes from a grad school colleague who recalled a ditty “Hurray! Hurray! It’s The 8th of May, The 69th Day Of March.” We were both math majors and didn’t bother verifying this on the calendar. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026