9. “Number six.”
It means one’s brain. To be told to use one’s “number six” is to be exhorted to be sensible. As Roger Blench observes in his draft Nigerian English Dictionary, this expression started as student slang. My recollection of the origins of this expression is that biology teachers in secondary schools often assigned the number 6 to the cerebral cortex, the grey matter of the brain. If my recollection is wrong I’d appreciate a correction from anyone who knows how the connection between number 6 and the human brain started in Nigeria.
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