67 was voted the Word of the Year by Dictionary.com. 67 could be heard in the hallways and all around Milton High School at the beginning of the school year, but now it seems to be losing its popularity.

67 is slang, used by many, mostly teens and younger kids. But, as 67 is more talked about in the news and online, it is not surprising to hear 67 out of the mouth of an adult, especially one who spends time around kids.

67 began its road to fame as a song, when the artist Skrilla released a song called “Doot Doot” and it had the phrase 67 in it. Then, it became a meme on TikTok after a video about basketball players' heights with LeMalo Ball being six feet, seven inches went viral. People then started using it everywhere, whether it was in schools, online or just for fun.

Bu, what does 67 really mean? The answer is, nobody really knows. Freshman Julianna Perella says, “It really has no meaning,” and nobody has a real definition for it.

Could it be that this common slang expression was overused and people are now over it? Freshman Ella Farina said she believes so because, “people don’t say it as much anymore and I don’t really see videos or jokes about it.”

Some believe the cause of 67’s decline is that it has become a common vernacular in older adults, rather than children and teenagers. Many grandparents say to “come over at 67!” or “it's 67 o’clock!” and, to make matters worse, they’re laughing at it.

Numbers as memes is not a new phenomenon. There is also an older version of 67, a grandparent of sorts: 21. The reason it became popular? Math. A viral video posted to Vine involving a kid who was asked what 9+10 was and confidently said, “21” instead of 19.

The tragic element is that the kid who was seen in the meme ran away from home after being overwhelmed by teasing from the internet and those around him, as explained by the Meme Fandom, a group that follows and finds background stories of slang and memes in pop culture. It is assumed that he struggled academically and had a hard time understanding certain concepts, including math and spelling. As seen in the note he left, he had poor grammar and many simple words misspelled like “you” which was spelled “yu” or laughing, spelled in the note, “laufing”. It remains unclear if he is still alive, or where he is.

21 debuted in 2013 on Youtube and Vine. It eventually lost popularity but still goes through phases of use, like in 2019 when the video resurfaced and got over 25,000 views in only 4 days. It then resurfaced in 2021, on September 10 because of the way the date is written- 9/10/21 and the math the kid got wrong was 9+10=21.

21 was just an older version of 67. Nobody really knows what it means, yet people liked to use it to lighten the mood of the room. That’s one of the weird things about slang, nobody can really pinpoint why it's cool, other than the idea that everyone else is using it, and it pressures others into using it.

It is also important to note that English is a very slang-friendly language. Other languages have very strict rules and make it harder to have slang. Take French, for example. Sure, people might shorten words, but they also have the Academie Française, an organization in France that makes sure that the French Language stays “French.” It creates completely different new words instead of using the word if it originated from another language. This word might not resemble the word it is based on.

Meanwhile, in English, there is not a part of the government that is in charge of making sure that they stay “English” and it is also much easier to shorten words in English. This allows English to be more slang friendly, and adapt words like 67 or 21 more quickly.

Is this the end of 67? Or will it keep coming back again and again? Who knows, or should I say, 67?