Making New Year’s resolutions is not as captivating, for me, as discovering what top dictionaries declare as the “word of the year”. Even though we have flipped our calendars to 2026, it is too early to say what the word will be for 2026. However, key dictionaries, such as dictionary.com, have been able to choose the word of the year for 2025. And that word is “six-seven”.
Many of you are probably rolling your eyes at that choice, wondering how and why it was selected, and thinking that it would be better categorized as “the most annoying word of 2025”. So how did dictionary.com decide that six-seven is the word of the year?
The selection was made by lexicographers who analyzed a large amount of data, including search engine results, social media trends, and news headlines, to identify words that made an impact on our conversations, online and in the real world. The searches for 6-7 rose significantly beginning in the summer of 2025, and have continued to increase ever since, with no signs of stopping.
The trend began with rapper Skrilla’s drill rap song “Doot Doot (6 7),” in which the lyric 6 7 repeated. The song quickly gained a professional basketball connection, most notably with NBA player LaMelo Ball, who is 6 feet 7 inches tall. But what does it mean, and why were teachers trading tips online about how to get their students to stop saying 6-7all day long?
It is complicated to define the word, and depending on who you ask, the definition varies. Some say it means “so-so,” or “maybe this, maybe that,” especially when paired with its signature hand gesture, where both palms face up and move alternately up and down. Some young people will use it as a reply to just about any question. (“How was school today?” “6-7!”) A perfectly timed 6-7 signals that you’re part of an in-group, and if you’re already using its emerging spin-offs, six-sendy and 41, you might be even cooler.
Perhaps the most defining feature of 6-7is that it’s impossible to define. It’s meaningless and nonsensical. Still, it remains meaningful to the people who use it because of the connection it fosters. 6-7shows the speed at which a new word can rocket around the world and become popular in global conversation.
As a non-lexicographer, my choice for the 2025 “word of the year”, and every year, is “Bible”. The Bible is the inspired word of God and remains, by a significant margin, the most popular book in the world. 6-6, not 6-7, because that’s how many books are in the Bible!
Happy 2026!
Sheryl