Kids Can't Stop Saying '6-7'. Why Did Austen, Shakespeare, And Chaucer Use The Numbers Too?

shakespeare bustApparently, Gen Alpha keep saying “six seven” – a phrase which, unhelpfully, seems to be basically meaningless. As the LA Times put it, “The lack of meaning behind the phrase has seemingly given it the ability to show up everywhere and for kids to find any reason to shout it out and laugh.”Still, I couldn’t help but think of the phenomenon while reading Jane Austen’s Catherine, or The Bower, recently. The book used the phrase “at sixes and sevens” – e.g. “everything as she expressed herself be at sixes and sevens” – a couple of times. And in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, he wrote: “to set the world on six and seven”.Shakespeare’s Richard II, meanwhile, reads: “All is uneven/ And everything is left at six and seven”. So what did those long-lasting numbers mean to the writers? What does “at sixes and sevens” mean? The phrase “at sixes and sevens” means something is in disarray or confusion. We aren’t definitely sure where it comes from, but there are two theories. The more widely accepted one is that it may come from a dice game known as hazard. “It is thought that the expression was originally ‘to set on cinque and sice’ (from the French numerals for five and six),” World Wide Words explained.“These were apparently the most risky numbers to shoot for (‘to set on’) and anyone who tried for them was considered careless or confused.” Another theory is that “at sixes and sevens” comes from a disagreement between two livery companies in 15th-century London. A particularly nasty tiff between tailors at the Merchant Taylors Company and fur traders in the Skinners Company, who both wanted increased precedence at the Lord Mayor’s river procession, escalated. So, the “Lord Mayor Billesdon resolved the dispute by ordering the Skinners and Merchant Taylors to take turns at going ahead of each other every year,” the Skinners’ site reads. They would alternate between sixth and seventh place, which some people think led to the phrase “at sixes and sevens”. There’s a problem with this, though – the ruling took place in 1484, while the phrase appeared in Chaucer’s work believed to have been written roughly a century before.The phrase has been confusing for a lot of its life The Gen Alpha “six seven” likely comes from either the drill rap Doot Doot (6 7) by Skrilla or basketball player LaMelo Ball (who is 6′7″). Shocker: it probably doesn’t have its roots in a dice game or guilds. But the reaction it’s elicited – “Someone tell me what this means or I’m gonna scream,” a TikTok user beseeched watchers – could be linked to the older version.That’s because, World Wide World explained, the people who may have adopted the phrase from French likely didn’t speak the language and possibly had no idea where it came from.Ultimately, though, just as parents struggle to understand what the two numbers actually mean, we can’t say for sure what the origins of the older version really are.Related...Kids Keep Saying 'Six-Seven' And Nobody Seems To Know What It MeansThere's A New Number Replacing 'Six-Seven' And You're About To Hear A Lot More Of ItWhy Does My Child Keep Saying 'Good Boy'?!

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