It doesn’t have to be like this.
Dictionary.com is not exactly a controversial website (unless you ask word nerds), but it has managed to generate a mass old men yelling at clouds event. The site announced its Word of the Year for 2025, and it picked a word that is actually two words (numbers even) that already exist but have been combined to create some sort of new, nonsensical term that captures the nihilistic brainrot of a generation: “Six-seven” (siks sev–uhn).
In Dictionary.com’s slight defense, there is almost certainly no “word” that has seen a larger spike in usage than six-seven has. If you have anyone in your life under the age of 18, you’ve almost certainly heard the term repeated an inexplicable number of times. Dictionary.com claims that six-seven has appeared in digital media six times more frequently in October 2025 than it did in any month of 2024. So, if Dictionary.com is trying to serve as a sort of word time capsule, it’s certainly captured a moment.
