Dictionary.com is upping the ante. The online thesaurus announced Monday that it has landed on its word of the year: “maxxing.”
The company says the word was chosen to “capture a society that’s deeply online and focused on optimization in all forms.” According to data analyzed by Dictionary.com, usage, including searches for the term, increased by 1000 percent in 2026. Past winners have included the viral “6-7” trend, “demure,” and “hallucinate.”
“’Maxxing’ is unique for its versatility, popular as a standalone verb and a modifier,” Steve Johnson, Director of Lexicography for the Dictionary Media Group, said in a statement. “It reflects both the 2026 urge to push everything further and the need to make fun of ourselves when optimizing life starts to feel absurd.”
The term was first used in gaming circles with “min-maxing,” a strategy where tabletop and role-playing (RPG) gamers put all their focus on optimizing one of their character’s specific skills, like strength or speed, minimizing the necessity of other extra qualities like intellect or luck. It gained popularity — and its interpretive spelling — in incel and manosphere circles beginning in the 2010s, where young men often discuss best practices to “looksmaxx,” or make themselves more attractive and increase their number of sexual partners.
While “maxxing” is less of a word and more like a one-size-fits-all suffix for any behavior that doesn’t have chic enough branding, its usage online has developed from a one-off phrase to an ad nauseam staple. You can become an expert in moneymaxxing, fitnessmaxxing, foodmaxxing, sleepmaxxing, even maxxingmaxxing. (There are no rules! I can do what I want — dictionary.com said so.) It’s about improving everything — small and large — as much as possible.
Dictionary.com picks its words of the year to represent distinct moments in pop culture and social history. They choose based on a combination of articles, search history, and social media trends and are clear that they allow slang words that other dictionary and thesaurus companies might not consider legit enough for a printing. “As we define it, our mission as a dictionary is to document words as they are actually used,” the online dictionary says on its site.
Other words that just missed out on the top prize include “affordability,” “data center,” “unc,” and “odyssey.”
