1132. This week, in honor of Dictionary.com choosing "6-7" as its Word of the Year, we look at the origin of other number phrases: "23 skidoo" and "at sixes and sevens."
1132. This week, in honor of Dictionary.com choosing "6-7" as its Word of the Year, we look at the origin of other number phrases: "23 skidoo" and "at sixes and sevens."
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Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Today, in honor of Dictionary.com picking "67" as their word of the year, we're going to look at some other numerical phrases: "23 skidoo" and being "at sixes and sevens."Â
But before we start, a listener named Scott wrote in with more history about the phrase "ghost in the machine." It turns out, this phrase actually originates in philosophy. The British philosopher Gilbert Ryle coined the phrase in reference to Rene Descartes' theory of mind/body dualism. Scott explained that Descartes "believed that the mind was independent of the body. A soul. This theory was informally referred to as “The Ghost in the Machine” theory. Because you are a mind or soul trapped in a body." Super interesting. Thanks, Scott.
by Mignon Fogarty
So recently, I found myself chatting with some friends, feeling witty, and when it came time to leave, I confidently declared it was time to "52 skidoo." It rhymed; it felt right; I must have been thinking of playing cards. But my friends looked confused and said, "You mean '23 skidoo,' right?"
Embarrassed, I laughed it off, but it got me wondering — why "23 skidoo"? What's so special about the number 23, and why "skidoo"? I mean, it's an odd phrase.Â
Well, "23 skidoo" is one of those quirky American expressions that emerged in the early 20th century. At its peak, you could find it in songs, and ads, and on pennants and armbands at fairs, parks, and resorts all over the country. In at least one firehouse, engine number 23 became known as the "Skiddoo" engine.Â
It means to leave quickly — or to be kicked out. It's like the early 1900s version of saying "get lost" or "beat it."
And the two parts of "23 skidoo" actually existed independently before they joined forces.
First came "23." This slang term popped up as early as 1899, meaning "move on," "get out," or "goodbye." The World Wide Words website has an example from that year where a newspaper man from Chicago wrote about spotting this new phrase. He described a big newsboy confronting a smaller one who was trespassing on his territory, shouting, "Here! Here! Twenty-three! Twenty-three!" And there are other examples of people saying "23" to people they want to go away, with outsiders not understanding where it came from, which actually reminded me of Dictionary.com just picking the teenage interjection "67" as the word of the year. Most adults think "67" is odd (and it IS meaningless, unlike "23"), but "67" actually wasn't the first two-digit number to find use as a slang term.
And, after "23," we got "skidoo." This word showed up in the early 1900s and meant pretty much the same thing — leave or depart.Â
There's a story in the December 25, 1904, Washington Post about five chorus girls and their manager who gave an impromptu performance in a police station after coming in to report that someone had broken into their boarding house and stolen some of their beautiful clothes and lingerie. At the end of the performance, one of the girls named Maude reportedly said, "'Now, that's enough. Let's skidoo." And the writer reported that "they skidooed with smiles and backward glances."Â
And I'm really sad that there's no byline on the article because it's amazing. It reads like a cheesy noir detective novel. Here's another line about one of the girls: "She wore a purple princess dress that fitted her as if she had been poured into it and left to cool."Â
So soon after this, by early 1906, these two expressions had merged into the complete phrase "23 skidoo." The combination was catchier than either word alone, and it spread like wildfire. On a Google Ngram search, you can see "23 skidoo" take a big jump in American English. It peaks very quickly in 1908 and then falls rapidly, like a quirky slang term might; but then it ramps up again and becomes even more popular in the 1940s. And it doesn't seem to appear at all in British English — this is just an American thing.
In fact, this shows up in the transcript of an inquiry about the Titanic disaster. Door number 23 on the Titanic was called the "skidoo door," which is how someone in an inquiry confirmed he could remember exactly which watertight door he was being asked about.
The witness said, "We used to call it the skidoo door, on account of the number. That is how I remember the number."
The Commissioner said, "I do not understand that?" and the witness replied, "It is an American joke." The Commission asked the witness to explain it, and he said he couldn't.
But although there are a bunch of theories, nobody knows for sure where "23" came from.
The most popular explanation involves New York City's iconic Flatiron Building at 23rd Street, where Fifth Avenue and Broadway intersect. Macmillan used to be in this building, and I actually signed our partnership agreement for Quick and Dirty Tips in the top corner office, which was quite a view and quite a day.Â
But the building's triangle shape creates a wind tunnel effect that was infamous in the early 1900s for lifting ladies' skirts as they walked by. That's part of the story that I did not experience. But, groups of men would supposedly gather to watch, and the story is that police officers regularly dispersed these gawkers, allegedly telling them to "23 skidoo" because the building was on 23rd Street.
But most experts think this theory doesn't hold water: saying "23" to scram was already circulating in 1899, and the Flatiron Building wasn't completed until 1902. So while the police may have used the phrase to chase away the cads, it likely didn't originate because of these activities.Â
Theory #2 traces "23" back to Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities." In the 1899 theatrical adaptation called "The Only Way," the hero, Sidney Carton, faces execution as prisoner number 23. An old woman sits at the guillotine's foot, counting heads as they roll, and emotionlessly says "23" when Carton meets his fate. The phrase supposedly became popular among theater folk, meaning "it's time to exit" or "you're finished."
This theory is appealing because the play premiered in 1899 — the same year "23" started showing up in newspapers as slang — but the earliest newspaper reference is actually a few months earlier than the play.
Theory #3 points to an actor named Tom Lewis who helped popularize "23" in George M. Cohan's 1904 Broadway musical "Little Johnny Jones." (The same show that gave us "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "The Yankee Doodle Boy.")Â
And a fourth theory suggests that "23" was a telegraphers' shorthand code meaning "away with you" — kind of like an early version of CB radio slang. But the World Wide Words website says no code dictionaries of the time show 23 being used in any way like that, and Wikipedia says the Western Union Code defined 23 as meaning "all stations copy."
Other theories involve horse racing (English racetracks supposedly limited races to 23 horses), Death Valley's mining town of Skidoo, California (with its challenging 23-mile water pipeline), and even a prison break where "23 skidoo" was the signal to scatter.
The truth is that when it comes to "23," we'll probably never know for sure.
The "skidoo" part is a little bit easier to trace. Most word experts agree it evolved from the older term "skedaddle," which means to leave hastily and which Etymonline says was popular American Civil War slang. "Skidoo" was likely a playful variant of "skedaddle," joining other fun variants like "scadoodle." Unfortunately, we can only trace it back so far, though, because nobody knows where "skedaddle" came from either.
So my mistaken "52 skidoo" sent me on a great linguistic hunt. Although we can't say exactly how "23 skidoo" came about, I still love it even though it's not as popular as it used to be. And next time, I'll get the number right.
"23 Skidoo." Flatiron NoMad, May 19, 2022. https://flatironnomad.nyc/history/23-skidoo/ accessed November 1 2025
"23 Skidoo - Meaning & Origin Of The Phrase." The Phrase Finder, December 2023. https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/393450.html accessed November 1 2025
"23 skidoo (phrase)." Wikipedia, August 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_skidoo_(phrase) accessed November 1 2025
Brown, Peter Jensen. "twenty-three skidoo." Wordorigins.org, July 14, 2022. https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/twenty-three-skidoo accessed November 1 2025
"Etymology of the phrase 'Twenty-three Skidoo.'" English Language & Usage Stack Exchange, accessed November 1 2025. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/133977/etymology-of-the-phrase-twenty-three-skidoo-as-used-in-hey-arnold
"Hamlet Was a Frost But the Chorus Girls Made Good with Mulcahy." Washington Post, December 25, 1904. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-washington-post-skidooed/184119381/ accessed November 1 2025
"Twenty-three Skidoo." World Wide Words, https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-twe2.htm accessed November 1 2025
by Mignon Fogarty
So, as I said earlier, a couple of weeks ago, Dictionary dot com picked the teenage slang "67" as their 2025 Word of the Year.
The phrase probably comes from a song called "Doot Doot (6 7)" by the rapper Skrilla, and it became viral through basketball-related TikToks, including a March 2025 video of a boy named Maverick Trevillian yelling the term at a basketball game.Â
Dictionary dot com says it is "purposefully nonsensical and all about being in on the absurdity." Some people say it means "so-so" or "maybe this, maybe that," when it's paired with a hand gesture where both palms face up and move alternately up and down. But mostly? It means nothing at all.
The reaction online has been fast and cranky. For example, one post with more than 350,000 likes says, "ITS NOT EVEN A WORD," in all caps, and my own followers agree — they think Dictionary dot com jumped the gun choosing a Word of the Year in October, and they're particularly annoyed that it's slang with no clear definition.Â
But one of my Facebook followers named Mahala Russell wrote an interesting comment that made me want to dig deeper. She wrote: "There's this quote in Anthony Trollope's 1876 novel The Prime Minister: '... Mr. Rattler did try to comfort me the other day by saying that everything was at sixes and sevens, and I really took it almost as a compliment to be spoken to ...' Mahala said, "Maybe it's a stretch to think that could hint at the birth of what is now 6 7, but you never know!"
So let's look at that older phrase, which does have a meaning.
At Sixes and Sevens
The phrase "at sixes and sevens" — meaning in a state of confusion or disorder — actually started hundreds of years ago as "to set on six and seven." And back then, it meant something completely different.
There's a popular story that tries to explain the phrase through a dispute between two London trade guilds — the Merchant Taylors and the Skinners — who fought over who would be sixth and who would be seventh in a list of all the trade guilds, also called liveries, listed in order of their economic and political power. According to World Wide Words, in 1484, Lord Mayor, Sir Robert Billesden settled the dispute by ruling that the two companies — and I love this! — would alternate between sixth and seventh place each year, switching every Easter. But this story can't be the origin since Chaucer used the phrase more than a century before this dispute was settled.
The ultimate origin is a bit murky though. Many sources, including the Oxford English Dictionary, suggest the phrase originally was "to set on cinque and sice" — using the medieval French words for five and six — hopefully I got close with the pronunciation — but apparently, these were the riskiest numbers to bet on in dice games. The theory goes that "cinque" got anglicized as "six," and "sice" became "seven." Some people think this is a bit of a stretch, but it's the explanation that most sources accept.
But whether that makes sense or not, the earliest appearance is in Geoffrey Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" from the mid-1380s, where he wrote (translated to modern English), "Let not this wretched woe gnaw at your heart, But manly set the world on six and seven." According to Phrase Finder, this meant to carelessly risk your entire fortune, as in a game of dice.
Shakespeare used a version of the phrase in Richard II around 1595: "But time will not permit: all is uneven, And every thing is left at six and seven." By Shakespeare's time, the meaning had already shifted to the way we use it today, to mean "in a state of confusion or disorder." But the phrase didn't take its current plural form "at sixes and sevens" until the 1670s.
So how does this connect to today's "six-seven"? Well, it doesn't — not directly, anyway. These are two completely different phenomena that just happen to share numbers. The Victorian-era phrase in Trollope's novel refers to confusion and disorder. The modern teenage slang, according to Dictionary dot com's Steve Johnson, is an interjection — "a burst of energy that spreads and connects people long before anyone agrees on what it actually means."
The medieval phrase started as gambling slang about risk and evolved into something about confusion. The modern phrase? Even though "67" is confusing to adults, it's meaningful in some way to the kids who love it. One middle school science teacher said, "You can't say any iteration of the numbers 6 or 7 without having at least 15 kids yell, '6-7!'"Â
Which takes me back to "23 skidoo" for a second: I found an instance just like this with that phrase too. In the 1908 "Proceedings of the Annual Reunion of the Society of the 28th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry," in a letter signed "Your comrade," the author, P.B. Darling, can't seem to help himself and adds "skidoo" in parentheses after citing page 23 of the book. It reads, "On page 23 (skidoo) you give Co. G as having 38 survivors; on 91 only 2 are given." The written outburst triggered by the number just as it is for kids who hear their slang number today.
But getting back to "at sixes and sevens," the phrase evolved from risky dice games in medieval England to a Victorian-era expression of disorder. And "six-seven"? It came from a rap song in 2024, means approximately nothing, and won Dictionary dot com's Word of the Year anyway. Both phrases involve the numbers six and seven, but one has lasted centuries and the other is probably just enjoying some fleeting fame.
Finally, I have a familect story from Jana:
Hello, Mignon. This is Jana from Central Arkansas. I'm a big fan of your podcast. I have a short and not so sweet familect. You know how a lever becomes leverage? Well, somehow in my family when the dogs leave us presents in the house, poop has become poopage. So when there's something to pick up, we’ll say, “Oh, there’s poopage.” I hope this brings a smile. Thanks for everything.Â
Thanks, Jana. We have to make those dirty jobs more fun, right?
If you want to share the story of your familect, a special word or phrase you use with your family, or a friendilect, leave a message on the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL or leave a voice message on WhatsApp. Â
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Morgan Christianson in advertising; Holly Hutchings, director of podcasts; Rebekah Sebastian in marketing; Dan Feierabend in audio; and Nat Hoopes in marketing, who recently became an uncle. Congratulations!
And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl and author of the tip a day book, "The Grammar Daily," which people have told me makes a great gift for English teachers. That's all. Thanks for listening.Â