Summary:
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Dictionary.com names “6-7” Word of the Year for 2025, a meme representing a range of emotions and nothing at once.
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“6-7” serves as a vibe marker, originating from a song and spreading through social media, classrooms, and beyond.
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The phrase reflects a new way language evolves, using numbers as catchphrases to convey mood and belonging in Gen Alpha culture.
Dictionary.com has crowned “6-7” the Word of the Year for 2025, validating a kid-driven meme that went from chaotic TikTok audio to everyday shorthand for… well, feeling a little bit of everything and nothing at once.
Six Seven! The 2025 https://t.co/prxh2vanib Word of the Year Causes School Chaos https://t.co/ypvT7ypEXv pic.twitter.com/liqfDFvMfK
— Education Week (@educationweek) October 29, 2025
What “6-7” actually means
Short answer: It doesn’t really mean anything, at least not in a traditional, dictionary sense. “6-7” functions as a vibe marker. Kids deploy it as a playful shrug, a hype tag, or an inside joke that signals you’re Extremely Online. The elasticity is the point. Media outlets describe it as “nonsensical,” “playfully absurd,” and deliberately undefined, which is exactly why it spreads.
Word of the year ya’ll
6 7
🫱🫲 pic.twitter.com/tbHe7jITNu— Citizen Sean (@HD_Sean) October 29, 2025
The phrase traces back to Skrilla’s 2024 track “Doot Doot (6 7)” and took off in early 2025 via hoops edits, with fans linking it to Charlotte Hornets star LaMelo Ball, who is 6-foot-7. A youth hoops clip of “the 67 kid” yelling it courtside kicked the meme into mass culture. From there, it spilled into classrooms and even TV parodies.
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This pick signals a shift in how language evolves. Numbers-as-catchphrases mirror the way short audio hooks drive attention on TikTok and Reels. The selection also acknowledges that Gen Alpha memes don’t always require semantics to communicate mood or belonging.
Educators and parents have reported “6-7” ricocheting through classrooms, sometimes to the point of distraction, which is part of a broader “brain-rot” conversation about hyper-memetic kid culture. Coverage has framed it as annoying yet oddly useful, because it gives kids a low-stakes way to signal in-group identity. When a nonsense signal becomes a social handshake, lexicographers take notice.
Online, “6-7” pops up in captions, student skits, sports interviews, and comment-section punch lines. It also spawns riffs like “six sendy,” doubling down on the joke. The through line is participation. If you get it, you’re in. If you don’t, yelling “6-7” on cue kind of gets you in anyway.
