If you’ve spent any time near a teenager this year, you’ve probably heard someone yell “67” and wondered if you missed a memo. You didn’t. There is no memo. That’s the entire point.
Why It Matters: Dictionary.com just crowned “67” as its 2025 Word of the Year, cementing what might be the most aggressively meaningless piece of slang to ever dominate playgrounds, basketball courts and TikTok feeds across the country.
What’s Happening: The term—which sort of means “so-so” or “maybe” or absolutely nothing, depending on who you ask—appeared in digital media six times more frequently in October 2025 than during the average month in 2024, according to Dictionary.com’s analysis.
Kids have been screaming it from school bus windows, getting it banned from classrooms and working it into every possible context until adults give up trying to understand. Mission accomplished.
Between the Lines: Dictionary.com’s director of lexicography calls 67 “one of the first Words of the Year that works as an interjection, a burst of energy that spreads and connects people long before anyone agrees on what it actually means.”
Translation: It’s purposefully nonsensical, and that’s exactly why it works.
Catch Up Quick: The origins remain murky. Some credit Skrilla’s 2024 drill song “Doot Doot (6 7).” Others point to NBA player LaMelo Ball’s 6-foot-7-inch height becoming a meme of swagger and dominance.
A viral video of “the 67 kid” shouting the phrase at a youth basketball game launched it into internet immortality. From there, NBA and WNBA teams referenced it. NFL players threw up the hand gesture—palms up, moving alternately like a shrug—during touchdown celebrations. Even Shaquille O’Neal joined in, though he admitted he still doesn’t know what it means.
The Big Picture: The term has already spawned variations like “six-sendy,” a mashup of 67 and “getting sendy” that means going all out. It’s a textbook example of how modern slang blends sports culture, digital humor and the kind of generational creativity that leaves adults squinting in confusion.
Other contenders for word of the year included agentic (AI that acts independently), aura farming (cultivating charisma for online clout), overtourism, tariff and tradwife.
None of them captured the cultural mood quite like two numbers that mean nothing and everything at once.
Before You Dismiss This Article…
We live in a time when information feels overwhelming, but here’s what hasn’t changed: facts exist whether they comfort us or not.
When A&W launched their third-pound burger to compete with McDonald’s Quarter Pounder in the 1980s, it failed spectacularly. Not because it tasted worse, but because customers thought 1/3 was smaller than 1/4. If basic math can trip us up, imagine how easily we can misread complex news.
The press isn’t against you when it reports something you don’t want to hear. Reporters are thermometers, not the fever itself. They’re telling you what verified sources are saying, not taking sides. Good reporting should challenge you — that’s literally the job.
Next time a story makes you angry, pause. Ask yourself: What evidence backs this up? Am I reacting with my brain or my gut? What would actually change my mind? And most importantly, am I assuming bias just because the story doesn’t match what I hoped to hear.
Smart readers choose verified information over their own comfort zone.
B.T. Clark
B.T. Clark is an award-winning journalist and the Publisher of The Georgia Sun. He has 25 years of experience in journalism and served as Managing Editor of Neighbor Newspapers in metro Atlanta for 15 years and Digital Director at Times-Journal Inc. for 8 years. His work has appeared in several newspapers throughout the state including Neighbor Newspapers, The Cherokee Tribune and The Marietta Daily Journal. He is a Georgia native and a fifth-generation Georgian.
