Slanguage: How ‘6-7’ makes sense even though it means nothing

January 16, 2026 – 10:25 AM

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, in

Halloween costumes

and even in

teachers’ lesson plans

A couple of things are clear about the 6-7 phenomenon: kids love saying it and adults love hating it. But what does it actually mean? The answer — “It doesn’t mean anything” — appears to be the main complaint. But meaning nothing is kind of the whole point.

While it may not signify anything in the conventional sense of meaning, 6-7

expresses solidarity and belonging

Users of the expression show that they’re part of the in-group as opposed to those who “just don’t get it.” They’re deploying something sociolinguists call

“social meaning.”

Not all meaning is about dictionary definitions

When people think about meaning, it’s normally semantic meaning. Six, for example, is a numerical concept that we understand to mean one more than five and one less than seven. It’s another way of saying half a dozen. It’s the age that most children enter Grade 1. Maybe it’s suppertime.

While 6-7 has no semantic meaning, it has a very definite social meaning. Social meaning involves

how hearers interpret language

not only on the basis of the meaning of the words, but on the basis of what kind of person is speaking and how they align themselves socially.

Social meaning speaks volumes

Consider a person’s clothing and hairstyle, for example.

Wearing a Winnipeg Jets jersey and a mullet hairstyle signals to people in Canada things about you without you even opening your mouth: you’re a hockey enthusiast, invested in a team, and probably play or watch the game regularly. Then, to add to these visual cues, you can use a phrase such as “Fire that biscuit top shelf!” that lets people know not only that you want your player to “shoot the puck up high in the corner of the net,” (semantic meaning) but also that you’re positioning yourself as a hockey person who is knowledgeable on the matter (social meaning).

True synonyms are rare in languages

. Even when there are two words that mean the same thing, they usually have different connotations, are used in different contexts or have different social meanings. Calling a “puck” a “biscuit” might be referring to the same object, but it certainly does not have the same overall meaning in discourse.

Usually, words have at least semantic meaning and sometimes also social meaning. 6-7 is interesting precisely because it has no semantic meaning,

only

social meaning, which is much more uncommon.

Slang, social development and growing up

The fact that an expression with only social meaning has been adopted primarily by adolescents is to be expected. Adolescence is a period of intense social development.

This age group is leaving childhood behind, and the teenage years have consistently been found to be a

time of deep linguistic change

This era results in what is often called the

adolescent peak

of 15 to 17, when the use of new slang and innovative items is most pronounced. That said, 6-7 is generally used by a younger group, more in the 11 to 14 age range — and even younger now, as it moves rapidly through the population.

It’s possible that we’re seeing the effects of

children being online at a younger age

, and that this intense social development is happening earlier.

In the end, the fact that 6-7 doesn’t mean anything is perfectly fine. It’s not simply “

brain rot

,” but rather the developmentally appropriate creation of a saying with social meaning for adolescents at a time when social dynamics are the most important aspect of their lives.

And if you really hate it, don’t worry, you don’t have to use it, and yes, it will pass. By now it’s so widespread that only the uncool (adults and younger kids) are using it anyway. It has already lost its cachet.

A new perplexing, yet socially meaningful, phrase or expression will soon take its place. In fact, it appears that

41 may be the new 6-7

Nicole Rosen

, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Language Interactions,

University of Manitoba.

The Conversation

under a Creative Commons license. Read the

original article