67 Was Word of the Year. Here Is Why That Makes Sense
Dictionary.com picked a number nobody can define as its Word of the Year. It was the right call, and here is the argument.
· 2 min read · by the 67 team
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When Dictionary.com announced that its Word of the Year was 67, the reaction split cleanly by age. Anyone under fifteen nodded. Anyone over thirty asked how a number can be a word, and then how a word with no meaning can be the word of the year.
Both questions have good answers.
A number can be a word
Words are whatever a community uses to communicate. "OK" started as a joke abbreviation. "Lol" is three letters that nobody pronounces as letters anymore. 67 is said, not calculated: nobody adds six and seven when they hear it. It has a pronunciation rule (two words, never "sixty-seven"), a gesture, a tone and a set of situations where it fits. That is a word.
Meaninglessness is a feature
The dictionary's own definition admitted that 67 has no fixed meaning: it is "a reaction", "a vibe", an expression of being part of the moment. That sounds like a failure of lexicography. It is actually a category that linguists have studied for a century: phatic expressions, words whose job is social rather than descriptive. "How are you" does not request a medical report. 67 does not request anything either. It says: I am here, I get it, we are the same.
Why 2025 needed it
Word of the Year choices are a mirror. Previous winners were about anxiety, politics and technology. 67 is about a generation choosing to communicate with a sound that adults cannot decode, at a time when every other channel they use is monitored, algorithmic or monetised. A meaningless number is the one thing that cannot be sold back to them. (We are aware of the irony of saying this on a website with a game. The game is free.)
What the award did to the meme
Normally an award like this is a death sentence. Once the dictionary has it, the joke is over. 67 shrugged it off, partly because the award itself became a 67 moment: "the dictionary picked 67" is a sentence that makes teenagers do the hands. You cannot kill a meme by acknowledging it if acknowledgement is the punchline.
Our verdict
Right call. If a word is defined by how many people use it, how instantly it is understood, and how impossible it is to explain to outsiders, 67 was not just the word of the year. It was the only candidate.
