My child was playing with her number blocks yesterday and made a joke whose punchline was “six seven.”
She’s five.
Granted, she has older siblings who expose her to the current trends and humor, but it seems to speak to just how much the silly little two-word phrase has infiltrated all our lives and become one of the most popular meaningless things to say.
No wonder Dictionary.com has chosen “six seven” as its word of the year.
Where Does 67 Come From, Anyway?
As we reported earlier this year, “six seven” doesn’t really mean much of anything at all.
It’s from a lyric in rapper Skrilla’s song “Doot Doot,” and it follows a few lines that discuss gun violence, but the words “six seven” simply refer to 67th Street in Chicago. Think of it as though Eminem fans a couple of decades ago had walked around chanting “8 Mile Road.” Or, to name an example that actually happened, NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton” was modified, with teens wearing shirts declaring them “straight outta” various towns and cities.
Maybe the “six seven” line caught kids’ attention because it’s said more slowly than the rapid beat of other lines, or perhaps it was just random, but as the line was added to relevant moments in TikTok videos (like a basketball score), it just kept taking off.
The Line Is Now A Part Of Popular Culture
The line is no longer confined to student use, either. School staff and teachers are taking the opportunity to make a direct connection with kids by using “six seven” in lesson plans and other contexts.
Memorial Middle School, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, gets credit for perhaps the most memorable use. They shared a photo on their social media of a school sign reading:
“How many nights per week should you be reading? 6-7”
They aren’t alone, though. On Etsy and similar sites, one can find shirts for teachers with the same line, and teachers seeking a slower-burn style of joke are choosing shirts similar to one I stumbled across on TeePublic, showing a math problem– the square root of 4489.
Any student who actually does the math will find that the answer is 67.
Dictionary.com Word Of The Year
Every year, there are verbal trends, often related to social media and popular culture. Over the past decade, Dictionary.com has chosen words including “demure,” “pandemic,” “misinformation,” and “woman.”
All of these words became relevant in their particular year thanks to trends (does everyone remember the “very mindful, very demure” TikTok trend from last year?) or current events (“pandemic” speaks for itself). Suddenly, these words enjoyed much more frequent use than typical and roused curiosity and interest.
Dictionary.com explains why they’ve chosen “six seven” for 2025, after their team exhaustively examined search data, headlines, social media, and more.
“Searches for 67 experienced a dramatic rise beginning in the summer of 2025. Since June, those searches have increased more than sixfold, and so far the surge shows no signs of stopping. Most other two-digit numbers had no meaningful trend over that period, implying that there is something special about 67.’
The phrase is now officially part of the cultural zeitgeist, and for now, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.