Why ‘Six-Seven’ Might Be the Most Important Nonsense You’ll Hear All Year

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We had been in the car no more than 30 seconds when I heard my son and his cousin, who hadn’t seen each other in months, chanting the same sing-songy words together as if a rehearsed choral performance, “Six - seven… Six - seven…”

They started giggling. Both boys, just in Kindergarten and unknowingly members of Gen Alpha, had caught the viral phrase sweeping the nation’s kids. I have refrained for months from writing about six-seven here, but this past week, Dictionary.com named 67 the word of the year, so I felt compelled to chime in (Indy100, 2025).

Even in the past few days, I saw 67 show up from couples’ Halloween Costumes to graffiti paintings for purchase at the NC State Fair, to the boys in my back seats. Six-seven made its way into headlines, articles, and segments in CBS, The Guardian, Glamour Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.

This phenomenon speaks to a larger trend in linguistics shaping generations and how information flows, as we will explore.

What Does Six-Seven mean?

Briefly, before we get into why this matters, let me define what six-seven means. According to Webster (2025) the phrase is: “a nonsensical expression.” It is labeled an interjection. For those of us who are a bit distanced from a 6th or 7th-grade language arts class, a primary interjection is a part of speech used to accentuate a point or add emotion, like “shoot,” “wow,” “opps,” “uh-oh,” or even “six-seven.”

Straight from the digital pages of Dictionary.com, they define the word as:

Why Should Six-Seven Matter to Leaders?

Arguably, this viral slang is one of Gen Alpha’s first mainstream movements as a generational cohort. Dictionary.com explained the cultural significance well when defending their choice for Word of the Year. “These words serve as a linguistic time capsule, reflecting social trends and global events that defined the year,” their announcement reads. “The Word of the Year…reveals the stories we tell about ourselves and how we have changed over the year.”

This should be sounding all sorts of alarms. Pay attention! Gen Alpha (born 2012–2025) is here and is already shaping culture. The oldest members in the cohort are clocking in at age 12. As we’ve explored in other essays, this is the exact age where beliefs, systems, and viewpoints on the world are being established.

Unique Vocabulary Is a Generational Signature

Language has always been a carrier of culture. Slang, idioms, and interjections are cultural torches passed down, subtly shifting the vocabulary and identity of each generation.

Consider how one generation often ridicules the phrases of the next. In the early 1990s, a phrase like “talk to the hand” emerged in American street slang as a dismissive retort, signifying a refusal to engage. It was popularized by comedian Martin Lawrence through his sitcom Martin (1992–1997), and quickly became part of pop culture (Hughes, 2024).

Then came the digital era. The acronym “LOL” (laugh out loud) originated in early internet communities such as Usenet and IRC chat rooms in the 1980s and 1990s. It was formally recognized by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2011 and remains a staple of online communication (Oxford English Dictionary, 2011).

By the early 2010s, “YOLO” (you only live once) surged into the mainstream after rapper Drake used it in his 2011 song The Motto, though variations of the phrase had appeared earlier in skate culture and motivational slogans (Klein, 2013).

Now enter Gen Alpha. These kids may not be leading teams or founding companies quite yet, but they’re already inventing and trading vocabulary in real-world playgrounds. And many of these phrases are spreading without the internet. My son, for instance, attends a school that encourages taking a “Wait Until 8th” pledge. He doesn’t have access to the internet, nor do most of the kids on the playground, but somehow, he and his friends still chant “six-seven.” It spreads through carpools, recess, cousins, and cousins of cousins.

This kind of analog virality mirrors how rhymes like “Ring Around the Rosie” or “Miss Mary Mack” were passed down orally for generations, long before digital platforms. In thier 1956 work, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, Opie & Opie write, “the curious lore passing between children aged about 6‑14 … continues to be almost unnoticed by the other six‑sevenths of the population.” Six-sevenths…how fortuitous. Anyway, their study is fascinating as they explore how rhymes and chants spread throughout school-aged children and how kids independently preserve their own dynamic linguistic subculture. It is an entire subculture that goes largely unnoticed by adults.

As leaders, when we pay attention to these phrases, we’re not just observing words, we’re watching values, identities, and worldviews in the making.

Language Isn’t Just Expression — It’s Identity

Linguistically speaking, words don’t just reflect culture, they construct it. In Amanda Montell’s bestselling book, Cultish, she writes, ”Words are the medium through which belief systems are manufactured, nurtured, and reinforced; their fanaticism fundamentally could not exist without them” (Montell, 2021). Psychologists and sociolinguists agree that language shapes how we see the world and how we see ourselves. The slang a generation uses becomes a shorthand for values, connection, and identity. As Professor Nicole Holliday puts it, “whoever’s cool leads the change.”

If you hear a kid say “six‑seven” today, it may seem trivial. But tomorrow, it could be part of a broader shift in how the next generation processes uncertainty, communicates humor, or defines social alignment. Ignore it, and you risk missing the clues.

A Generation Almost Fully Born

This isn’t just a story about a viral phrase. It’s about a generational milestone. As of today, Gen Alpha has 10 days less than 67 left to be born (yes, 57 days). After that, the full cohort will be born.

But what does that really mean? Well in two to four years, this generation will be old enough to work entry‑level jobs flipping burgers, scanning groceries. In four to six years, they’ll be applying to college. In just ten years, they’ll be graduating and entering the workforce full‑time.

And Gen Beta? They'll be roughly the age Gen Alpha is now slinging slang in elementary classrooms, spreading phrases with meanings we haven’t yet imagined.

So, What Should Leaders Do?

Far too many major news outlets and even speakers and writers have spent the last three decades over‑analyzing Millennials and recently, just finally, started taking Gen Z seriously. But Gen Alpha is already here. And while they might still be losing baby teeth or even getting their diapers changed, the oldest members of their cohort are also building a shared language that will shape how they lead, live, and learn in the years ahead.

As linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf argued in his seminal work Language, Thought, and Reality (1956), language doesn’t just describe our world, it shapes it. His “linguistic relativity” theory suggests that the words and structures we use guide what we notice, how we reason, and even what we believe is possible. In other words, language isn’t just a reflection of culture, it’s a leading indicator of its values, priorities, and worldview.

Leaders, whether you're running a classroom, a company, or a country, you need to pay attention not just to the platforms these kids might one day join, but to the playgrounds where their values are already taking shape.

Start listening now. Start learning their language, not to sound cool (in fact, I would recommend you don’t try to add their slang into your vocabulary), but instead to understand the culture they’re building. Because in ten years, they won’t be giggling in the back seat. They’ll be sitting across from you in interviews. Or across the table negotiating a deal. Or across the aisle in Congress.

So here’s my advice: Watch what they say. Then ask what they mean. Because six‑seven might be nonsense today. But tomorrow? It just might mean everything.

Your career will thank you.

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