Being a parent of middle school and elementary school kids in 2025 means I’ve had a steady rotation of my kids singing songs from KPop Demon Hunters and saying the catchphrase ‘67’ to just about everything. ’67’—pronounced six seven—was used so often on my kids’ sports team that their coaches implemented a 10 burpee rule for anyone uttering the phrase.
While ’67’ may be the bane of teachers’ and parents’ existence, the Gen Alpha slang went from a meme to the mainstream quickly, and Dictionary.com just announced ‘67’ as the 2025 word of the year. Does this mean we’ll finally get the true meaning of ‘67’ (often accompanied by a hand gesture with two palms facing up and moving up and down)? And what’s next in tween slang? Let’s explore.
How did ‘67’ become a thing?
When asking my own kids to describe this trending phrase, they didn’t know the origin or what it means. According to multiple sources, “6 7” likely made its way into the school hallways after TikToks and IG reels featuring basketball player LaMelo Ball, who is 6’ 7” tall, used audio clips from the Skrilla song “Doot Doot (6 7).”
Whereas millennials had SNL skits, commercial catchphrases, and ‘90s movie quotes (i.e., “as if”), ‘67’ is a symptom of our current, constantly online culture. A piece of good news for parents and teachers? ’67’ is more benign than those other two numbers teens once found hilarious…you know the ones.
What does ‘67’ mean?
Now that Dictionary.com chose it as the word of the year, does that mean we get a formal definition of the term? Not exactly, according to the company’s press release, “Some say it means ‘so-so,’ or ‘maybe this, maybe that,’ especially when paired with its signature hand gesture.” But, the company says, “perhaps the most defining feature of 67 is that it’s impossible to define. It’s meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical.”
Dr. Becky recently shared a video on Instagram about the trend with a thoughtful perspective: that saying “67” gives kids a feeling of belonging. So even if we think the phrase means nothing, it’s not nothing to the kids who are using it.
Why is ‘67’ the word of the year for 2025?
According to Dictionary.com, they chose ’67’ after their “lexicographers analyzed a large amount of data, including newsworthy headlines, trends on social media, search engine results, and more to identify words that made an impact on our conversations, online and in the real world.”
Other words on the shortlist of words of the year for 2025:
- Agentic
- Aura farming (another Gen Alpha slang term)
- Broligarchy
- Clanker
- 🧨 dynamite emoji (TNT, Taylor ‘n’ Travis)
- Gen Z stare
- Kiss cam
- Overtourism
- Tariff
- Tradwife
Does defining ‘67’ signal the end of it being cool?
When does something become so mainstream that it ceases to be cool? Is it when the adults start using it? Maybe. But some of my daughter’s teachers are actually using it to connect with their students. One comment on Dr. Becky’s ’67’ video mentioned this tactic too, “I’m a substitute teacher and the other day I got on the front foot. As a ‘stop, look, listen’ cue, I used, ‘one, two, three, four, five…’ and the kids immediately said ‘six, seven’ with huge grins on their faces. Definitely won me some street cred 😂😂😂”
Or maybe it’ll become uncool once kids learn the dictionary has defined it? ‘Demure’ was 2024’s word of the year, and a quick Google Trends search will show the term’s steady decline. Only time will tell if ‘67’ does the same—or evolves into something new. Which brings me to ’41’…
Is ‘41’ the new ‘67’?
My 10-year-old has recently been saying ‘41’ in addition to ’67’ with a new hand gesture—palms down, going back and forth, kind of like the hand jive from Grease (OK, that reference just made me feel really ancient.)
At first, I thought it was just because you can say forty-one with the same cadence as ‘67,’ but the old person in me had to Google it. Turns out 41 is thought to come from the track 41 Song by Blizzi Boi, and some are already calling it ‘the next 67’. Which, again, I think I’m OK with if it means the end of those other numbers, too.
Kathy Sisson, Senior Editor
Kathy Sisson has been a key contributor in the editorial parenting space for eight years, not only as a full-time editor at The Everymom but previously as a freelance writer for top parenting sites, including Scary Mommy, Motherly, Parent Co., and more. As an editor at The Everymom, she has produced hundreds of articles on a range of parenting topics, reviewed dozens of family-focused products, interviewed leading experts in the children and parenting world, and created viral parenting social media content. A mom of two, she is committed to sharing the honest, helpful, and often humorous stories of motherhood.
