number six

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Audio (Mid-Atlantic)

  (file)

number six (plural number sixes)

1. (cricket) The batsman who bats sixth.
2. (UK, slang, obsolete) Synonym of Newgate knocker (“a lock of hair worn twisted back toward the ear”)
   • 1861, Frederick William Robinson, No Church, page 252:

     Bessy knew it was called “Calverton's School” — and though many who attended it were big men who ought to have known their letters better, yet others were only youths, and a few quite little boys, who wore their hair in “number sixes” at the temples, when law had left them hair sufficient for such ornamentation.

3. (Nigeria, colloquial) One’s brain or common sense.

• number one, number two, number three, number four, number five, number seven, number eight, number nine, number ten, and so on

• John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary