6-7
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"Dictionary.com’s 2025 Word of the Year Is…"
Each year, Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year and short-listed nominees capture pivotal moments in language and culture. These words serve as a linguistic time capsule, reflecting social trends and global events that defined the year. The Word of the Year isn’t just about popular usage; it reveals the stories we tell about ourselves and how we’ve changed over the year. And for these reasons, Dictionary.com’s 2025 Word of the Year is 67.
Macquarie Dictionary's WOTY shortlist also included six-seven; Sam Altman is apparently planning to name his next AI model GPT-6-7; and a news search will give you plenty of other relevant stories, from basketball scores to "6-7 in the Bible".
The best explanation that I've seen for the origin and progress of this phrase comes from the local Philadelphia NPR station — Dillon Dodson, "For those still out of the loop, here is what ‘6-7’ means", WHYY News 11/17/2025:
The youthful phenomenon, in which kids say “6-7” and move their open-palmed hands up and down for no apparent reason, was recently named word of the year by Dictionary.com. Its origins trace to a song by a Philly rapper with gun-referencing lyrics, but the pop culture use of “6-7” is more playful — even becoming the focus of a recent episode of “South Park,” and companies such as McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Domino’s have offered promotions inspired by the two numbers.
As the saying has gone global, many people still don’t understand it — or that it’s most likely Philadelphia-based.
So what does “6-7” mean? And why has it become so prevalent? Here’s an explainer.
Go on and read the whole thing — which is even more complex and ambiguous than pop-culture etymologies usually are.
Update — Adding to the etymological complexity and ambiguity, Brian in the comments points us to Wikipedia's article "At sixes and sevens", which hasn't yet caught up with Skrilla…
Richard Hershberger said,
November 19, 2025 @ 5:23 am
I have two teenagers. They are unable to explain "6-7," though they are certainly aware of it. It looks to me to be a vogue expression, whose meaninglessness is part of the attraction. I suspect it will be short-lived: so 2025. 23 skidoo!
Brian said,
November 19, 2025 @ 6:29 am
Back in the day if someone asked "What's happenin'?" the response could very well be, "Same ol' sixes and sevens." The response meant "nothing unusual."
Wikipedia gives a review of the phrase through the years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sixes_and_sevens
VVOV said,
November 19, 2025 @ 7:05 pm
Wow, "at sixes and sevens" was an expression somewhere deep in my passive vocabulary that never came to mind when hearing the 2025 slang "6-7" until I read the above comment.
As a 30 something American, I associate "at sixes and sevens" with, like, 19th to early 20th c. British novels, or at least that's where I seeing hearing the expression before. So I was surprised that Wikipedia article cites two modern-ish American works (the play The Wiz and the movie Shaft), both of which I've seen but can't recall using the line in question.
Pedro said,
November 20, 2025 @ 5:07 am
My teenagers have always recited memes and I've always enjoyed watching their evolution, for example from "skibbedi-dop-dop-dop" to Skibidi Toilet (and Skibidi Fortnite etc.) and finally the so-called brain rot of "Sigma sigma spider climbed up the skibidi spout". But this 6-7 thing seems to me to be totally meaningless and not based on anything funny. What am I missing?
Philip Taylor said,
November 20, 2025 @ 6:01 am
Nothing, Pedro. Nothing at all. Mind you, I am clearly missing something, in that your "Skibbedi" / "Skibidi" / etc. all go straight over my head and I have no idea what you are talking about [*]! (Well, apart from "Incy-wincy spider", of which I have fond recollections for reasons I
can no longer recall — I am reasonably certain that it involved a young woman (name redacted) but what she used to do while reciting the rhyme is now sadly beyond my ken.
——–
[*] Sorry, not even I could bear to re-cast that as "I have no idea about what you are talking".