6-7 is word of the year. Make of that what you will.
Some words survive, others wither, as language evolves. Credit: AP / Stephan Savoia
Tis the season — for words of the year. For word geeks like me, it’s a super-fun time.
As far as I can tell, the lexicographers at dictionaries worldwide who pick these words do so earnestly, yet almost always create controversy.
To which I say: 6-7.
That’s dictionary.com’s word of the year.
Purists might balk: 6-7 is a number, not a word. For my generation, 6-7 was the answer to a question: How tall is Dr. J?
Today’s usage is nothing so definitive. In fact, the whole point of this Gen Alpha creation seems to be its lack of definition. Various explanations include “so-so” and “maybe this, maybe that,” or a general expression of indifference. Speakers often use a juggling-hands gesture while saying it. Adding to its elusiveness, it can be written 6-7, 67, 6 7, or six-seven.
Amid this ocean of uncertainty is one hard fact: It is never pronounced “sixty-seven.”
6-7 has been explosively popular with kids, for whom it is part performance, part inside joke used in school, on the street and at home. Many of us oldsters remain hopelessly baffled, as oldsters across generations have been baffled by new vocabulary and syntax invented by youngsters. This one might be more ephemeral than most. My grandson, who is in high school, tells me it’s already passé with many high schoolers and waning in popularity with the middle school set, though elementary school kids still seem to be using it and have added to it. Now it’s 6-7-41, or just plain 41 — equally inscrutable, equally versatile.
Even dictionary.com fesses up that it is not sure of 6-7’s exact meaning — or its origin. It seems to come from a song by Skrilla called “Doot Doot (6 7)” in which the rapper sings, “The way that switch, I know he dyin’. 6-7. I just bipped right on the highway.” Its popularity was boosted by viral TikTok videos featuring basketball players, including pro LaMelo Ball, who is — yes — 6-foot-7. Some say 6-7 refers to 67th Street in Philadelphia, or 67th Street in Chicago, or the “10-67” police radio call indicating a death. “I never put an actual meaning on it,” Skrilla told The Wall Street Journal, “and I still would not want to.”
The fact that 6-7 is popular despite having no particular meaning seems appropriate for our social media-addled age in which vacuous pursuits are the norm. Macquarie Dictionary, Australia’s national dictionary, chose as its word of the year the term “AI slop,” which it defines as low-quality content created by artificial intelligence — slop, in other words, devoid of meaningful content or use. Cambridge Dictionary picked “parasocial,” which describes the one-sided connection people feel with public figures like Taylor Swift, social media influencers and even AI chatbots.
For the folks at dictionary.com, 6-7 is “the logical endpoint of being perpetually online, scrolling endlessly, consuming content fed to users by algorithms trained by other algorithms.” They say this product of “relentless sensory overload” bears the hallmarks of brain rot, a term that just last year was dubbed word of the year by Oxford University Press. They might be right; “brain rot” describes the perceived loss of critical thinking skills that comes from too much consumption of frivolous online content.
For some, 6-7 is a gleeful smirk at the adult world. For others, it’s a cri de coeur about the decline of civilization. But civilization has been in alleged decline for eons.
Shakespeare gave us swagger, bedazzled, and wild goose chase. The Jazz Age popularized sugar daddy, it girl, and spifflicated. Some words survive, others wither.
Whatever your stance, talking about words is healthy. Language, like the humans who use it, is always changing, always evolving. 6-7 is the proof, even if we don’t know what it means.
Columnist Michael Dobie’s opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
