12
12 noun: police or law enforcement, collectively. Also the clipping of 1260.
Noun
12 (countable and uncountable, plural 12s)
- Police or law enforcement, collectively.
- fuck 12
Symbol (1)
12
- Used by fans of American football, positioning themselves as the 12th member of an 11-player team.
Symbol (2)
12
- The Aryan Brotherhood: an American white supremacist, neo-Nazi prison gang and crime syndicate.
Also used as
12 is also the clipping of 1260.
Forms of 12
| plural | 12s |
|---|
Origin of 12
Of uncertain origin. Widespread use of the phrase as an anti-police slogan grew following the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. * Possibly from 1312, an alternative form of ACAB (“all cops are bastards”) in which the letters are substituted with their position in the alphabet. * Alternatively, from the American police procedural television series Adam-12 (1968–1975), in which 1-Adam-12 refers to a patrol unit and its radio call sign. Likely popularized by "F*ck 12", a song by American hip-hop group Migos from their 2013 mixtape Y.R.N. (Young Rich Niggas), which uses 12 in reference to the police while describing a narcotics raid: “12 kickin' in my front door […] 12 in my home, they won't leave me alone”.
Shortening.
The alphanumeric code for AB, an initialism for the Aryan Brotherhood.
Phrases with 12
Questions about 12
- What does 12 mean?
- 12 means police or law enforcement, collectively.
- What part of speech is 12?
- 12 can be a noun or a symbol.
- What is the plural of 12?
- The plural of 12 is 12s.
Words near 12 in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: 12 (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “12.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/12. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.