Dictionary.com Names 'Maxxing' Word of the Year — SkimNews
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- Dictionary.com named 'maxxing' its word of the year, highlighting the trend of maximizing personal performance across life domains
- Dungeons and Dragons players have used 'min-maxing' for years to optimize character stats, a precursor to modern 'maxxing' culture
- Will Smith popularized the concept of 'maxin’ and relaxin’' in the 1990s, an early mainstream nod to balanced self-optimization
- Experts predict the 'maxxing' trend is here to stay, as the suffix becomes increasingly embedded in everyday language
Why it matters: The selection of 'maxxing' as word of the year signals a broader cultural normalization of extreme self-optimization, where productivity and personal improvement are linguistically framed as aspirational. This shift makes previously niche, high-effort behaviors seem mainstream and desirable, potentially raising the social baseline for what it means to 'do enough' in daily life.
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