Everyone knows that the six is a person who carries out minor tasks of a higher authority in exchange for his favor. The term is used in the criminal vocabulary, but recently it is also used among people who are not related to crime. There is the verb "six", meaning "to run errands," "please," "serve."
There are so-called woolen ones - prisoners who impersonate the principal and authoritative, but actually commit the so-called lawlessness of their own free will or at the request of the administration. In a sense, they are also sixes, because any help and cooperation with the administration of the prison gives the prisoner a chance for parole. As a rule, they don’t get the coveted parole, since the colony administration itself does not respect the sixes because of their unstable moral principles.
Who is the Six?
Why are subordinates called just sixes? This term comes from the lowest card suit - six. One of the common strategies in the card game "Fool" is to throw out all their sixes at the beginning of the game. Thus, we see a certain allusion to the so-called cannon fodder - no one appreciates sixes, they are only forced to do what they are ordered to climb on the rampage at the first demand. Despite the fact that the term was originally used among thieves, bandits and other criminal personalities, today it is actively used by ordinary people.
Alternative version of word origin
Who is the Six? According to another version, this term has its roots not from the criminal world. Sixes in the 19th century called young children serving in taverns. They got such a nickname again because of the very card that serves kings and aces. Some say that on the day the sixes paid 6 kopecks, hence the nickname. Restaurants and taverns were a place of frequent gathering of the local underworld, thieves and cheaters, who adopted this term and spread it in their circles. Who is the Six in 19th Century Russia? Servant, errand boy, servant.
Who is called the six?
To date, there is no clear distinction in this matter. So who is the six? With the meaning of this word in the criminal world, everything is more or less clear. Among people who are not related to the criminal world, six is called any person, out of fear and servility, carrying out every whim of his boss, authoritative comrade, etc.
Very often the six does this in order to get some privileges from their benefactor. As a rule, their only privilege is a warm place next to the authority itself. Authority itself does not value its sixes and uses them to achieve some of its goals. The six may be an office clerk, waiting for promotion and licking the heels of his boss, and a teenager from a dysfunctional family, trying to cling to street authority. Sometimes they are so mistakenly called informers, but they have no mandatory connection with the sixes. Not every informer is a six, and not every six is an informer.