‘Maxxing’ is Dictionary.com’s word of the year: ‘It’s cooler than saying you’re doing more’

Maxxing is not a new concept. Dungeons and Dragons players have been “min-maxing” character stats for years; Will Smith was maxin’ and relaxin’ in the 90s; as far back as the 40s, the term was used in game theory.

But in the past few years, as all facets of our lives are optimized, the suffix has become inescapable. We’re personalitymaxxing to charm our peers and sleepmaxxing to get the best possible rest; the Pentagon brags about “lethalitymaxxing”.

The explosion in the word’s use has made it Dictionary.com’s word of the year for 2026.

To choose each year’s word, Dictionary.com staffers investigate search trends, social media and the news, “and then we ask ourselves what’s telling the most compelling story of the year”, says Steve Johnson, director of lexicography for the Dictionary Media Group. “This year, maxxing stood out because it really connects to so many different parts of life. People are proteinmaxxing their breakfast, tokenmaxxing their use of AI during the workday, cozymaxxing on a Friday night.”

While “maxxing” has been around in various forms for decades, it’s the phenomenon of “looksmaxxing” – putting your physical appearance above all other concerns, and going to extreme lengths to improve it – that has fueled the recent rise in the word’s use. The message board 4chan is responsible for a vast amount of current slang, according to the linguist Adam Aleksic, and looksmaxxing has roots in online “incel” communities that use it.

But the suffix has emerged from the shadow of 4chan. As associate editor of Among the New Words, which tracks emerging terms in a quarterly journal, the linguist Kelly Wright and her colleagues have documented examples of the term’s use since 1990, when it appeared in a D&D context, through looksmaxxing-related 4chan posts in the 2010s to YouTube discussions of “vibemaxxing” (“adding to my energy”) and Substack posts on “vocabularymaxxing” (“because there are some thoughts you’ll only have if you have the words for them”) in 2025.

Wright sees the word as particularly creative – it can “apply to anything”. Dictionary.com data bears this out: by August 2026, it was being used 19 times as often in digital media as its monthly average in 2025.

And these days, it says far more about our social media-driven compulsion to optimize than it does about inceldom. “If there is an aspect of life that could be improved, it can probably be maxxed,” writes Jennifer Donnelly, a researcher at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, at the Conversation.

That comes with risks, she writes, as it suggests there is some kind of endpoint to the improvement process. “But health, wellbeing, social relationships and lifestyle habits aren’t really something we complete,” and maxxing can fuel “constant self-surveillance, self-criticism and the pursuit of an idealised ‘optimal’ self”.

In fact, that obsession is emerging on both ends of the words we use: terms recently added to the dictionary include “prefixes that mean ‘much more’ – things like ‘hyper’, things like ‘ultra’, ‘super’”, Johnson says.

The suffix benefits from being “infinitely customizable but instantly recognizable”, Daria Bahtina, a continuing lecturer in the UCLA department of linguistics, writes in an email. “You can attach the pattern to practically anything while still sounding like you are participating in a particular linguistic and cultural moment.” Saying you’re “proteinmaxxing” feels much cooler than just saying you’re eating more protein.

Its popularity could also be, in part, simply related to its sound. “The sound structure of a word tells us a lot,” Wright says, “and maximalism is trending.” A similar string of sounds – “maxx” – “was maybe a little primed to get picked up”.

Bahtina and Johnson agree that it’s unlikely most people using “maxxing” are thinking about any incel connections. Still, Bahtina wonders if its constant usage could help elevate its origins into the mainstream. “Someone encounters pheromone-maxxing or some other allegedly annoying but innocent version,” she writes, “and suddenly there is a linguistic breadcrumb trail into a much broader ideological ecosystem.”

So can we expect “maxxing” to stick around as a suffix – will it have the staying power of “-gate”, which has denoted scandal ever since Watergate, or will it go the way of “-licious”, which stretched from Bubblicious bubble gum to Destiny’s Child’s Bootylicious, but, as Johnson notes, has largely disappeared?

It’s difficult to predict, the linguists say. Once a slang term gets a mainstream platform, it often loses its cachet. But “I don’t think it’s going to fizzle out,” says Wright. It’s not just young optimizers who’ve embraced it: “Middle-aged people really love this word. Corporate brands love this word. So it’s going to have some staying power.”