6-7

By announcing AI slop as their word of the year, Macquarie Dictionary has escaped being cancelled by all the primary teachers of Australia.  If they had chosen 6-7 it would have been a very different matter.

The 6-7 fad has become the bane of teachers’ lives, and not just in maths classes.  It is amazing how often there is a mention of six or seven that causes the class to collectively chorus 6-7 with the accompanying weighing-in the-hand gesture.  The fact that it has no meaning makes it all the more irritating. It is an in-joke shared by the children at the expense of the teacher.  So off the children go to detention but this just increases their enthusiasm.

No one is sure how it started.  One theory is that it comes from a rap song by Lord Skrilla with the title  Doot Doot 6-7.  Skrilla is a Black American rapper from Philadelphia and 6-7 refers to the local police call sign 1067 for a dead body.  But the phrase has been inserted into a new context by people who don’t understand Philadelphian Black American English and stripped of its meaning.

There is another way in which 6-7 is being used in American English which relates to the phrase at sixes and sevens. This does have a meaning. It is comparable to 50/50.  How was your day?  Oh it was 6-7.  All over the shop.  What’s it like?  Oh 6-7.  Of doubtful value.

Meanwhile parents and teachers are hoping that the other 6-7 will run its course.  It is now being replaced by 41 but that is hardly an improvement. Perhaps over the summer holidays they will forget about it entirely?