The Meaning of 67, Which Is None

"6 7," usually spoken aloud as "six seven," is a catchphrase with no agreed meaning whatsoever, shouted by children in response to almost anything and often accompanied by a gesture in which both hands rise and fall as though weighing two invisible objects. It began as a lyric in a drill record released in December 2024 by the rapper Skrilla, in which the phrase recurs to no obvious purpose. The likeliest account traces it to 67th Street in Chicago, though the artist has cheerfully declined to assign it any meaning, and has said he would prefer that it kept none.

The phrase might have stayed put had the internet not found a use for it. On TikTok the lyric was laid over highlight footage of the basketball player LaMelo Ball, who stands six feet seven inches tall, the beat dropping neatly on the words. From there it passed to the young, and to Gen Alpha in particular, who took it up with the devotion usually reserved for a national anthem. By October of last year it had been named word of the year by an American dictionary, an honour it accepted while continuing to mean nothing.

It is now chiefly an affliction of the classroom, where the mere appearance of the numbers six and seven, in a sum or on a page number, is enough to set a whole room chanting. Teachers and parents have laboured to work out what the children are actually saying, which is, on inspection, precisely nothing. That may be the entire appeal. A generation has minted a password that admits everyone who knows it and means nothing to anyone who does not, which is a remarkably efficient way of settling who is in on the joke.