Each year, Dictionary.com chooses a word of the year, reflecting trends in language and culture. This year’s word is the phrase “6-7.”
Dictionary.com has faced controversy towards their decision, due to people disliking the support for “brain-rot slang” and wishing for a more thoughtful word to have been chosen. Dictionary.com defends their choice by stating that the phrase “6-7” serves as a “linguistic time capsule,” capturing its cultural significance.
“It shows that we are very much caught up in these quick, little one liners that are put out on social media,” OHS teacher David Beene said. “It’s more of a meme culture now than it is a language culture.”
As more phrases lose their meaning due to online culture, teachers and students are forced to think about the future of communication and creativity. “6-7” being awarded word of the year signals how our communication habits are starting to focus on trends.
“As an English teacher it upsets me a little bit,” Beene said. “Reading and language is all that inspires critical thinking. The thing that I worry about with things like this is the lack of critical thinking that the next generation is going to have.”
The phrase “6-7” originated from the song “Doot Doot (6-7)” by Skrilla, which was released in 2024. It automatically gained popularity through TikTok basketball edits, specifically focusing on NBA player LaMelo Ball – who is six feet and seven inches tall. The song lyric began to morph into the shortened phrase, and as time progressed, “6-7” began to lose its meaning, becoming more of an inside joke for the younger generations.
“I don’t think it means anything,” Beene said. “I think that’s the thing. It’s just a quick little phrase that caught on and that people sort of latched on to. I don’t think it’s bad. There’s not some bad reference in it or anything like that. I just think it’s crazy that something that simple caught on and was so widespread.”
Although the repetition of the phrase has caused it to become widely disliked, some continue to use it. Senior Callie Bennett believes that “6-7” has brought people together and is a positive outcome of technology related slang-culture.
“We are a very unserious generation,” Bennett said. “I think that it just really shows how words and simple numbers can bring us together. I think that one day we are going to speak in a language that today we would not even recognize. We will speak in random numbers, like 41 and 67, and words will get shorter and shorter. Our words will be shorter and lose meaning. But, you know what, at least we’ll have humor.”
While “6-7” began as a term used by those who are “chronically online,” it has become unavoidable for all ages. Many schools and teachers have banned the phrase due to the abrupt disturbances it can cause. The lack of a definite meaning can be frustrating for some.
“6-7” means absolutely nothing to me,” Sophomore Anne Marie Blair said. “It’s gotten out of hand. It makes me very irritated when I hear it, especially now because I feel like it’s been so overused, and I don’t want to hear it anymore. The joke isn’t funny anymore, and it just has no purpose to me.”
Many are disappointed in Dictionary.com’s decision due to “6-7” being both numerical and nonsensical. Some past words of the year from other sources include demure, rizz, gaslighting and other terms which are coined from TikTok. These are seen to reveal the decreasing quality of the English language.
“I think that language trends are heading to less meaningful words,” Blair said. “It shows how uncreative people our age are. They let one person make something up, and then they just keep using it. We’ve been so brainwashed from the internet that we can’t make up jokes anymore that are actually funny. We just have to say what everybody else is saying. Our society is plummeting.”
