Oct. 27, 2026
“Maxxing”: The Word Of The Year (At Least It’s Better Than "6-7?")
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RSS Feed Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year is one that we’ve all heard, read, and yes, sometimes even used in varying situations. “Maxxing” is a word that refers to the practice of pursuing an activity to the fullest, or optimizing a certain aspect of your life. It can be used on its own, but it’s often used with a word ahead of it making it work in just about any scenario. While looksmaxxing may be the most well known application, it can be used throughout the day: you can be proteinmaxxing your breakfast, tokenmaxxing AI during your workday, and then end with cozymaxxing at night. Annoyed yet?
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks.
00:00:02
Speaker 2: It is Tuesday, October 27th, and we have got a new word of the year. I don't like it. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. How many do we get? Dictionary.com does one. Cambridge? Webster? I mean, we get them from a lot of places.
00:00:21
Speaker 1: I think there ends up being like three or four words of the year, but this is the first one, and I feel like this dictionary.com one is the one that ends up making the most headlines. Because remember what it was last year.
00:00:34
Speaker 2: I don't.
00:00:36
Speaker 1: Six, seven. Oh, God.
00:00:38
Speaker 2: Man, that came and went, didn't it? As soon as older people started saying that, it was done. Kids were like, nah, we're out. So yes, that ran its course.
00:00:48
Speaker 1: And in that vein, dictionary.com is giving us adults a way to end annoying words of the year. Because actually, it feels like most words of the year are are annoying words our kids say.
00:01:01
Speaker 2: All the time. I don't hear this one that much.
00:01:04
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I read it all the time. I think that's the difference between this one. This one is like a hashtag or it's in every article with people trying to be cool, like they're hip, like they get it.
00:01:15
Speaker 2: Wasn't demure one, one year?
00:01:17
Speaker 1: I think so.
00:01:18
Speaker 2: But so our words of the year, not words that are spoken. So the word of the year, it seems to be our words that trend.
00:01:25
Speaker 1: Yes, I do think that is what part of the criteria is. They see how often a word is used, how often it's used in social media, how often it appears in articles, and that's a part of all of it. In fact, I think a little bit later, we will talk about the actual roadmap or the criteria that dictionary.com uses to pick its word of the year, but Look, I mean, for those of us of a certain age, maxing was a bad thing, like maxing out your credit card or what do we like? Like you're maxing like the top speed. It was always like something dangerous or bad or too much. Now it feels like it's optimizing, whereas before it was I think it was too much. That's what maxing meant, right?
00:02:11
Speaker 2: Like maxed out.
00:02:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're maxed out. Exactly.
00:02:14
Speaker 2: That's the only way, again, this is a word, if we haven't said officially, it was a two Xs, right?
00:02:18
Speaker 1: Yes, two Xs because, but still, it's still considered short for maximizing. But again, when we were at a certain age, we were using it with a negative connotation. They say this word was chosen to, quote, capture a society. That's deeply online and focused on optimization in all forms. That's how they describe or the reason why maxing is 2026 is word of the year. And I don't think we could have predicted this one. Certainly didn't see six, seven coming.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: Predicted max out is that what's the kid? The, um, The clavicular.
00:02:57
Speaker 1: Oh, clavicular. Yeah.
00:02:58
Speaker 2: What's the thing he does?
00:02:58
Speaker 1: Clavicular.
00:02:59
Speaker 2: Look smacking.
00:02:59
Speaker 1: Look smacking. And that is, so they specifically referenced, dictionary.com referenced look smacking. Looks maxing. I always say that.
00:03:08
Speaker 2: You say lip smacking.
00:03:08
Speaker 1: I want to say like lip smacking, but it's looks maxing. They say that that use rose more than 1,000% since the start of the year. That's pretty significant. Since the beginning of 2026, Looks maxing use rose more than a thousand percent.
00:03:27
Speaker 2: Looks maxing, that specific one.
00:03:29
Speaker 1: Specific term, looks maxing.
00:03:30
Speaker 2: You know, what are the major ones? Looks maxing, what else is?
00:03:33
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I have a bunch of examples.
00:03:37
Speaker 2: Were you familiar with all of them? Some of them, not.
00:03:40
Speaker 1: All of them. I think you know looks maxing, but basically they say the cool thing about this word, maxing, is that it works as a noun, a verb, an adjective, and an adverb all at once. So they gave examples of looks maxing, gym maxing, health maxing, protein maxing, tan maxing. Yes.
00:03:59
Speaker 2: Wait, wait, wait. Noun? Is it a noun? Yeah. Maxing.
00:04:03
Speaker 1: I guess he's looks maxing. Is that a noun? But they claim that it's all in one. I'm literally quoting dictionary.com, which is kind of funny. But there are plenty of people who have lists of the most annoying maxing terms that you could possibly use. But yeah, there's token maxing, which is folks who rely on AI. They're token maxing. I don't really know because I'm not into AI.
00:04:30
Speaker 2: I thought it was going to be like a black thing.
00:04:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:04:33
Speaker 2: The one black guy in the office?
00:04:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's token maxing.
00:04:36
Speaker 2: His office is token maxing.
00:04:37
Speaker 1: He's really flexing his blackness right now. Yes.
00:04:40
Speaker 2: Token maxing, all right.
00:04:41
Speaker 1: Nona maxing, bettering one's life by adopting the habits of an Italian grandmother. But there are a lot of maxings. Now, the origins of this is interesting. You can sleep maxing. That's what you need to do.
00:04:56
Speaker 2: What else besides looks maxing? What else do we hear normally?
00:04:59
Speaker 1: Sleep maxing. People talk about cozy maxing.
00:05:02
Speaker 2: What?
00:05:03
Speaker 1: Like getting cozy on the weekend, so I'm cozy maxing. Homeland maxing is what they say in government circles, they say. They're homeland maxing. And then there's the pushback reaction to maxing where people say, I'm nothing maxing. which means you're maximizing doing nothing.
00:05:19
Speaker 2: Nothing?
00:05:20
Speaker 1: I think last year, what did Annalise keep saying? That she was rotting in her bed. Yes. So now it's nothing maxing. Or people normal max. So I'm normal maxing.
00:05:30
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
00:05:30
Speaker 1: Like just being a regular person. But everything can have maxing out behind it. Now, the history behind it is actually pretty interesting. So I did a deep dive here. It all... The whole concept of maxing dates back to the 1940s, and it was used in academia describing a game theory. So it was the mini max strategy. So basically the strategy is to minimize their maximum possible losses. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay, so you build up a character's strengths. If you're gaming, say you're playing a video game, you're going to build up a character's strengths in a particular area to the point that its weaknesses don't matter. And so that's the whole concept behind looks maxing. Like I'm going to focus on my face and I'll break bones and do whatever it takes so that you see how perfect my face looks and maybe you won't pay attention to the fact that I'm whatever.
00:06:42
Speaker 2: An idiot.
00:06:44
Speaker 1: Okay. I was going to say.
00:06:45
Speaker 2: Oh, just my first example. But that's what you're saying. I am going to highlight this other thing and accentuate it so much that you won't notice the other faults or the other faults won't matter to you.
00:06:56
Speaker 1: Correct. Correct.
00:06:57
Speaker 2: So can you be wealth maxing?
00:06:59
Speaker 1: Yes. All of that is possible. And they say today people will even come up and this isn't in our circles. But apparently, they say this is traditionally pretty much Gen Z and Gen Alpha. And that's basically everyone younger than us because we're Gen X. And so the next one is millennials. I guess this is aged out of millennials even. This is Gen X. So this is like Ava and Anna. And then Gen Alpha, which is Sabine. I can just talk about it in our children's ages. So Ava's about to be 24. And Sabine is about to be 14. So that stretch, that generations of folks are the ones who are using these terms. And so I think it's pretty funny, but they say that people walk up and say, what are you maxing? Like they want to know what you're focused on. What?
00:07:53
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:07:53
Speaker 1: They say that that is something that kids will walk up to each other and say, what are you maxing? Okay.
00:07:58
Speaker 2: What's the proper response to that? Give me an example of a response.
00:08:00
Speaker 1: Well, you're marathon maxing. I'm just run maxing. You're run maxing. You're fitness maxing. You can put whatever adjective or noun or whatever in front of it that you want, and you're just letting everyone know that you're optimizing that part of your life.
00:08:17
Speaker 2: Can you be sex maxing?
00:08:19
Speaker 1: I guess so. I didn't see that as one of the things, but obviously. No, it's funny. They have the top annoying maxing trends. So here, this is according to, this is a radio station. This is hilarious. Friction maxing, deliberately making things harder or more inconvenient to build discipline or resilience.
00:08:39
Speaker 2: Friction maxing. Okay. What else do you got?
00:08:41
Speaker 1: Cortisol maxing. Living in a way that seemed designed to maximize stress hormones like overworking, doom scrolling, sleeping too little. You're cortisol maxing.
00:08:52
Speaker 2: What are those shots I've been getting in my foot? What is that?
00:08:54
Speaker 1: Cortisone. Wait, cortisol. Yeah, cortisol maxing. Okay. Yeah. So you're maximizing your stress hormones. You live in a cortisol maxing.
00:09:02
Speaker 2: Is there pain maxing?
00:09:04
Speaker 1: There's chud maxing. You know what chud maxing is? What is that? Embracing the tastes, habits, or aesthetics associated with uncultured, unpleasant chuds, like eating gas station food or wearing cargo shorts or sharing loud opinions online.
00:09:21
Speaker 2: That's the first time I can remember in my life that you describing something, I could smell something funky in the air. Just you describing that, the room starts stinking.
00:09:31
Speaker 1: Mogging, maxing. Who? Who?
00:09:33
Speaker 2: What is mogging?
00:09:33
Speaker 1: Mogging, maxing.
00:09:34
Speaker 2: I've heard mogging. I can't describe it.
00:09:35
Speaker 1: Aggressively trying to maximize one's ability to mog others. Basically to look, dress, or present yourself so much better than other people that they seem inferior to you. So you're mogging, maxing.
00:09:51
Speaker 2: I'm confused about mogging. Don't you just dress to... So people do that to... You know, that's the thing where you go stand next to somebody and they do it on social media. Exactly.
00:10:02
Speaker 1: It's to look, dress, or present oneself so much better that other people seem inferior by comparison.
00:10:08
Speaker 2: Well, we don't have that problem.
00:10:09
Speaker 1: So you're deliberately mogging, maxing. So it's like... Yes, but you can fitness, grooming, fashion, social, all this stuff. You can literally put anything in front of maxing and it's an acceptable way to describe something. And most people of a certain age know exactly what you're talking about.
00:10:26
Speaker 2: So when we left... Mexican restaurant, she was fart maxing on the whole walk home.
00:10:31
Speaker 1: Gas maxing. Yes, I guess. I guess you could do all of that. That's right. But when we come back, it does seem weird. Six, seven, now maxing. We're going to go into how dictionary.com decides what is their word of the year and what the finalists were to maxing. welcome back everyone to amy and tj we are talking about the word of the year and yeah it's annoying i feel like most words of the year are annoying i can't think of one that hasn't been recently i.
00:11:10
Speaker 2: Think they're meant to be read and shared and hashtagged maybe and not so much for conversation because some of it sounds kind of kind of silly like some of the words i have a list we i have a list of words robot can use around me like promenade or pied-a-terre Some things are just annoying. We don't talk like that.
00:11:30
Speaker 1: So then I try to use it as much as possible.
00:11:32
Speaker 2: It's so annoying.
00:11:32
Speaker 1: I'd really like to get a pied-a-terre. Or should we run on the promenade? I feel like there's another one that I say that's really annoying.
00:11:41
Speaker 2: There's up to five at least. They drive me crazy when you use them.
00:11:44
Speaker 1: You're like, what is that?
00:11:46
Speaker 2: Stop saying it. Stop saying.
00:11:48
Speaker 1: And then it's like, Amy's so white. I don't know. There's that too.
00:11:51
Speaker 2: But no, this makes sense. I'm saying in that respect, I can understand why hearing some words might.
00:11:56
Speaker 1: Yes, because I set you off plenty. All right. Dictionary.com says that it basically, starting in January, it keeps a running list of potential words of the year throughout the year. And what they do is they.
00:12:07
Speaker 2: Starting when, you said?
00:12:08
Speaker 1: At the beginning of the year. All year long, they kind of have a going, a growing list. And what they do is they do actually scientifically take a look at how often... A word appears in news articles, in social media, in Google searches. And then they also compare that or combine that with the cultural significance. And I think it's fair to say that with the maxing trends, like I laughed when I saw tan maxing. Like, how is that back? That is so, oh, because I lived in the 80s and early 90s where I actually went to a tanning bed.
00:12:43
Speaker 2: But don't we always say that? They just change the names. It's the same stuff.
00:12:47
Speaker 1: I was obsessed with being tanned before I knew that it was like really terrible for your health and your skin and aging. Once I realized all of those things, I stopped tan maxing at 19. But I, you know, another trend that's coming back, which is disturbing smoking. That's a whole other episode, but.
00:13:02
Speaker 2: I saw an article on this. Smoking is coming back?
00:13:04
Speaker 1: We have seen, okay, we were just on a college campus and we were kind of shocked at how many kids we saw smoking. Like flashback to 1995 and I felt like it was scarily going back in that way. So let's hope no one's smoke maxing.
00:13:22
Speaker 2: But you saw, you've seen some, off to the side here. You've seen something.
00:13:25
Speaker 1: Where smoking is- I saw an article saying that they are starting to see a trend of kids going back to cigarettes. So let's hope smoke maxing is not- going to be a thing. But yes, we mentioned last year's winner was 6-7. But here were the other finalists. And honestly, I don't feel like any of them even came close to maxing. Affordability. That was one of them.
00:13:48
Speaker 2: Okay. I would have understood. It's not fun, but I would have understood.
00:13:53
Speaker 1: Trump would have been very upset because, yes, leading into the midterms to say the word of the year is affordability. That would have pissed him off. off there would have been a true social post anti-dictionary.com that oh my god i mean can you imagine what.
00:14:09
Speaker 2: What kind of maxing does he do uh you.
00:14:14
Speaker 1: Know what maxing insult maxing that's a really good one yes oh my god shame maxing i mean he is just yes added data center was another word of the year on the short list.
00:14:28
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have liked that one.
00:14:29
Speaker 1: No, that's boring. No, that's just, I get what they're doing with it with the whole AI, but still, that seems meh.
00:14:37
Speaker 2: Unk.
00:14:38
Speaker 1: That would have been one that I could have seen them going with. Unk.
00:14:41
Speaker 2: Unk.
00:14:41
Speaker 1: It's ask Sabine what an unk is. Basically, it's short for uncle, but what it really means is you're an uncool older person. So it's a good thing if you don't know what unk is because that means no one's called you that.
00:14:54
Speaker 2: I've never heard that. Oh, I have.
00:14:56
Speaker 1: He's an unk. He's an unk. That means he's an uncool older person. If you really want to offend somebody who's probably in their early 20s, call them an unk when they're around younger folks and suddenly they feel old and uncool.
00:15:11
Speaker 2: Is it unk supposed to be uncool or uncle?
00:15:14
Speaker 1: Oh, you know what? That's so funny. I think it's both. I didn't even think about that, but you're right. That's probably why it took off because it's short for both. It's short for uncle, and it's also short for uncool.
00:15:26
Speaker 2: We're recording this as Sabine is in tutoring right now. Two seconds as to what's an unk. Quote somebody who is or acts old.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: There you go. And then the other, the last word that was on their short list was odyssey. And I get that the movie did gangbusters and everyone was talking about it, but I haven't heard people use Odyssey in another way. But maybe they have been, and I'm just not talking to the right people.
00:15:58
Speaker 2: You know, Odysseus, is that his name? Odysseus, yes. That name jumped up in most popular baby names.
00:16:06
Speaker 1: Odysseus.
00:16:06
Speaker 2: This year, yeah. That's a tough name. It was way down low anyway. It wasn't popular, but yeah, it... It shot up.
00:16:13
Speaker 1: Just thinking of a little baby like, hey there little Odysseus.
00:16:17
Speaker 2: What would you call him?
00:16:18
Speaker 1: Odie? Odie? Is that a boy's name?
00:16:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has to be, right? Yeah, Odie.
00:16:23
Speaker 1: Odie.
00:16:24
Speaker 2: Odie.
00:16:26
Speaker 1: Oh, that doesn't sound good. You don't want anyone to Odie.
00:16:30
Speaker 2: Old Dirty.
00:16:31
Speaker 1: I was thinking of Overdose.
00:16:33
Speaker 2: I was thinking of Old Dirty Bastard. The rapper, you know? None of it's good.
00:16:37
Speaker 1: No, obviously that reference was completely lost on me and my whiteness, but You talk about, let's talk about promenades and we can keep going. No, I didn't.
00:16:47
Speaker 2: Baby, I got your money. Don't you worry. You know, nothing. Nothing.
00:16:52
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:16:53
Speaker 2: Sorry. Wow.
00:16:55
Speaker 1: I'm an unk because I just got, I just got found out.
00:16:59
Speaker 2: No, that's all right. You don't know. Oh, dirty bastard. You remember that name. So it's okay. Oh, my goodness. All right.
00:17:06
Speaker 1: What? Okay. If you were to say you max, and be in all seriousness, I know we've made some jokes. If you max anything, what would you say you blank max to this year?
00:17:15
Speaker 2: Work max.
00:17:16
Speaker 1: Work maxing.
00:17:17
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Work maxing. Oh, yeah. You know that. There have been times I thought we've been travel maxing. We're always love maxing.
00:17:29
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
00:17:31
Speaker 2: I'm always grabbing ass maxing.
00:17:35
Speaker 1: My ass, by the way, no one else's.
00:17:39
Speaker 2: You know what? I didn't think it was necessary to make the distinction, but okay. It's fair to get that.
00:17:43
Speaker 1: I just wanted to make sure everyone knew. And yeah, we were marriage maxing this year. So there you go. We have had some fun with it. And look, I, I, I wonder now that dictionary.com has made maxing its word of the year if now no one will use it anymore because now it's jumped the shark.
00:18:01
Speaker 2: Well, because I'm going to start using it. Because I wasn't that familiar. Now it's just going to be hilarious. Baby, I'm taking out the trash maxing. This is going to be bad.
00:18:11
Speaker 1: Oh, my God. What's our love is blind maxing? Hey, you want to max out some Netflix? Netflix maxing?
00:18:18
Speaker 2: Sports maxing. SEC maxing.
00:18:20
Speaker 1: That's going to happen. We all know that, yes, the March Madness maxing.
00:18:25
Speaker 2: See, it's already getting played out.
00:18:27
Speaker 1: Right? We need to stop.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: This will be done in no time.
00:18:29
Speaker 1: It's annoyance maxing is what we're doing right now.
00:18:31
Speaker 2: It'll be done in no time. All right.
00:18:32
Speaker 1: With that, everyone, have fun with the word of the year, annoying your little ones in your life. And with that, we always appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Robach, alongside TJ Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks.
00:00:02
Speaker 2: It is Tuesday, October 27th, and we have got a new word of the year. I don't like it. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. How many do we get? Dictionary.com does one. Cambridge? Webster? I mean, we get them from a lot of places.
00:00:21
Speaker 1: I think there ends up being like three or four words of the year, but this is the first one, and I feel like this dictionary.com one is the one that ends up making the most headlines. Because remember what it was last year.
00:00:34
Speaker 2: I don't.
00:00:36
Speaker 1: Six, seven. Oh, God.
00:00:38
Speaker 2: Man, that came and went, didn't it? As soon as older people started saying that, it was done. Kids were like, nah, we're out. So yes, that ran its course.
00:00:48
Speaker 1: And in that vein, dictionary.com is giving us adults a way to end annoying words of the year. Because actually, it feels like most words of the year are are annoying words our kids say.
00:01:01
Speaker 2: All the time. I don't hear this one that much.
00:01:04
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I read it all the time. I think that's the difference between this one. This one is like a hashtag or it's in every article with people trying to be cool, like they're hip, like they get it.
00:01:15
Speaker 2: Wasn't demure one, one year?
00:01:17
Speaker 1: I think so.
00:01:18
Speaker 2: But so our words of the year, not words that are spoken. So the word of the year, it seems to be our words that trend.
00:01:25
Speaker 1: Yes, I do think that is what part of the criteria is. They see how often a word is used, how often it's used in social media, how often it appears in articles, and that's a part of all of it. In fact, I think a little bit later, we will talk about the actual roadmap or the criteria that dictionary.com uses to pick its word of the year, but Look, I mean, for those of us of a certain age, maxing was a bad thing, like maxing out your credit card or what do we like? Like you're maxing like the top speed. It was always like something dangerous or bad or too much. Now it feels like it's optimizing, whereas before it was I think it was too much. That's what maxing meant, right?
00:02:11
Speaker 2: Like maxed out.
00:02:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're maxed out. Exactly.
00:02:14
Speaker 2: That's the only way, again, this is a word, if we haven't said officially, it was a two Xs, right?
00:02:18
Speaker 1: Yes, two Xs because, but still, it's still considered short for maximizing. But again, when we were at a certain age, we were using it with a negative connotation. They say this word was chosen to, quote, capture a society. That's deeply online and focused on optimization in all forms. That's how they describe or the reason why maxing is 2026 is word of the year. And I don't think we could have predicted this one. Certainly didn't see six, seven coming.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: Predicted max out is that what's the kid? The, um, The clavicular.
00:02:57
Speaker 1: Oh, clavicular. Yeah.
00:02:58
Speaker 2: What's the thing he does?
00:02:58
Speaker 1: Clavicular.
00:02:59
Speaker 2: Look smacking.
00:02:59
Speaker 1: Look smacking. And that is, so they specifically referenced, dictionary.com referenced look smacking. Looks maxing. I always say that.
00:03:08
Speaker 2: You say lip smacking.
00:03:08
Speaker 1: I want to say like lip smacking, but it's looks maxing. They say that that use rose more than 1,000% since the start of the year. That's pretty significant. Since the beginning of 2026, Looks maxing use rose more than a thousand percent.
00:03:27
Speaker 2: Looks maxing, that specific one.
00:03:29
Speaker 1: Specific term, looks maxing.
00:03:30
Speaker 2: You know, what are the major ones? Looks maxing, what else is?
00:03:33
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I have a bunch of examples.
00:03:37
Speaker 2: Were you familiar with all of them? Some of them, not.
00:03:40
Speaker 1: All of them. I think you know looks maxing, but basically they say the cool thing about this word, maxing, is that it works as a noun, a verb, an adjective, and an adverb all at once. So they gave examples of looks maxing, gym maxing, health maxing, protein maxing, tan maxing. Yes.
00:03:59
Speaker 2: Wait, wait, wait. Noun? Is it a noun? Yeah. Maxing.
00:04:03
Speaker 1: I guess he's looks maxing. Is that a noun? But they claim that it's all in one. I'm literally quoting dictionary.com, which is kind of funny. But there are plenty of people who have lists of the most annoying maxing terms that you could possibly use. But yeah, there's token maxing, which is folks who rely on AI. They're token maxing. I don't really know because I'm not into AI.
00:04:30
Speaker 2: I thought it was going to be like a black thing.
00:04:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:04:33
Speaker 2: The one black guy in the office?
00:04:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's token maxing.
00:04:36
Speaker 2: His office is token maxing.
00:04:37
Speaker 1: He's really flexing his blackness right now. Yes.
00:04:40
Speaker 2: Token maxing, all right.
00:04:41
Speaker 1: Nona maxing, bettering one's life by adopting the habits of an Italian grandmother. But there are a lot of maxings. Now, the origins of this is interesting. You can sleep maxing. That's what you need to do.
00:04:56
Speaker 2: What else besides looks maxing? What else do we hear normally?
00:04:59
Speaker 1: Sleep maxing. People talk about cozy maxing.
00:05:02
Speaker 2: What?
00:05:03
Speaker 1: Like getting cozy on the weekend, so I'm cozy maxing. Homeland maxing is what they say in government circles, they say. They're homeland maxing. And then there's the pushback reaction to maxing where people say, I'm nothing maxing. which means you're maximizing doing nothing.
00:05:19
Speaker 2: Nothing?
00:05:20
Speaker 1: I think last year, what did Annalise keep saying? That she was rotting in her bed. Yes. So now it's nothing maxing. Or people normal max. So I'm normal maxing.
00:05:30
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
00:05:30
Speaker 1: Like just being a regular person. But everything can have maxing out behind it. Now, the history behind it is actually pretty interesting. So I did a deep dive here. It all... The whole concept of maxing dates back to the 1940s, and it was used in academia describing a game theory. So it was the mini max strategy. So basically the strategy is to minimize their maximum possible losses. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay, so you build up a character's strengths. If you're gaming, say you're playing a video game, you're going to build up a character's strengths in a particular area to the point that its weaknesses don't matter. And so that's the whole concept behind looks maxing. Like I'm going to focus on my face and I'll break bones and do whatever it takes so that you see how perfect my face looks and maybe you won't pay attention to the fact that I'm whatever.
00:06:42
Speaker 2: An idiot.
00:06:44
Speaker 1: Okay. I was going to say.
00:06:45
Speaker 2: Oh, just my first example. But that's what you're saying. I am going to highlight this other thing and accentuate it so much that you won't notice the other faults or the other faults won't matter to you.
00:06:56
Speaker 1: Correct. Correct.
00:06:57
Speaker 2: So can you be wealth maxing?
00:06:59
Speaker 1: Yes. All of that is possible. And they say today people will even come up and this isn't in our circles. But apparently, they say this is traditionally pretty much Gen Z and Gen Alpha. And that's basically everyone younger than us because we're Gen X. And so the next one is millennials. I guess this is aged out of millennials even. This is Gen X. So this is like Ava and Anna. And then Gen Alpha, which is Sabine. I can just talk about it in our children's ages. So Ava's about to be 24. And Sabine is about to be 14. So that stretch, that generations of folks are the ones who are using these terms. And so I think it's pretty funny, but they say that people walk up and say, what are you maxing? Like they want to know what you're focused on. What?
00:07:53
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:07:53
Speaker 1: They say that that is something that kids will walk up to each other and say, what are you maxing? Okay.
00:07:58
Speaker 2: What's the proper response to that? Give me an example of a response.
00:08:00
Speaker 1: Well, you're marathon maxing. I'm just run maxing. You're run maxing. You're fitness maxing. You can put whatever adjective or noun or whatever in front of it that you want, and you're just letting everyone know that you're optimizing that part of your life.
00:08:17
Speaker 2: Can you be sex maxing?
00:08:19
Speaker 1: I guess so. I didn't see that as one of the things, but obviously. No, it's funny. They have the top annoying maxing trends. So here, this is according to, this is a radio station. This is hilarious. Friction maxing, deliberately making things harder or more inconvenient to build discipline or resilience.
00:08:39
Speaker 2: Friction maxing. Okay. What else do you got?
00:08:41
Speaker 1: Cortisol maxing. Living in a way that seemed designed to maximize stress hormones like overworking, doom scrolling, sleeping too little. You're cortisol maxing.
00:08:52
Speaker 2: What are those shots I've been getting in my foot? What is that?
00:08:54
Speaker 1: Cortisone. Wait, cortisol. Yeah, cortisol maxing. Okay. Yeah. So you're maximizing your stress hormones. You live in a cortisol maxing.
00:09:02
Speaker 2: Is there pain maxing?
00:09:04
Speaker 1: There's chud maxing. You know what chud maxing is? What is that? Embracing the tastes, habits, or aesthetics associated with uncultured, unpleasant chuds, like eating gas station food or wearing cargo shorts or sharing loud opinions online.
00:09:21
Speaker 2: That's the first time I can remember in my life that you describing something, I could smell something funky in the air. Just you describing that, the room starts stinking.
00:09:31
Speaker 1: Mogging, maxing. Who? Who?
00:09:33
Speaker 2: What is mogging?
00:09:33
Speaker 1: Mogging, maxing.
00:09:34
Speaker 2: I've heard mogging. I can't describe it.
00:09:35
Speaker 1: Aggressively trying to maximize one's ability to mog others. Basically to look, dress, or present yourself so much better than other people that they seem inferior to you. So you're mogging, maxing.
00:09:51
Speaker 2: I'm confused about mogging. Don't you just dress to... So people do that to... You know, that's the thing where you go stand next to somebody and they do it on social media. Exactly.
00:10:02
Speaker 1: It's to look, dress, or present oneself so much better that other people seem inferior by comparison.
00:10:08
Speaker 2: Well, we don't have that problem.
00:10:09
Speaker 1: So you're deliberately mogging, maxing. So it's like... Yes, but you can fitness, grooming, fashion, social, all this stuff. You can literally put anything in front of maxing and it's an acceptable way to describe something. And most people of a certain age know exactly what you're talking about.
00:10:26
Speaker 2: So when we left... Mexican restaurant, she was fart maxing on the whole walk home.
00:10:31
Speaker 1: Gas maxing. Yes, I guess. I guess you could do all of that. That's right. But when we come back, it does seem weird. Six, seven, now maxing. We're going to go into how dictionary.com decides what is their word of the year and what the finalists were to maxing. welcome back everyone to amy and tj we are talking about the word of the year and yeah it's annoying i feel like most words of the year are annoying i can't think of one that hasn't been recently i.
00:11:10
Speaker 2: Think they're meant to be read and shared and hashtagged maybe and not so much for conversation because some of it sounds kind of kind of silly like some of the words i have a list we i have a list of words robot can use around me like promenade or pied-a-terre Some things are just annoying. We don't talk like that.
00:11:30
Speaker 1: So then I try to use it as much as possible.
00:11:32
Speaker 2: It's so annoying.
00:11:32
Speaker 1: I'd really like to get a pied-a-terre. Or should we run on the promenade? I feel like there's another one that I say that's really annoying.
00:11:41
Speaker 2: There's up to five at least. They drive me crazy when you use them.
00:11:44
Speaker 1: You're like, what is that?
00:11:46
Speaker 2: Stop saying it. Stop saying.
00:11:48
Speaker 1: And then it's like, Amy's so white. I don't know. There's that too.
00:11:51
Speaker 2: But no, this makes sense. I'm saying in that respect, I can understand why hearing some words might.
00:11:56
Speaker 1: Yes, because I set you off plenty. All right. Dictionary.com says that it basically, starting in January, it keeps a running list of potential words of the year throughout the year. And what they do is they.
00:12:07
Speaker 2: Starting when, you said?
00:12:08
Speaker 1: At the beginning of the year. All year long, they kind of have a going, a growing list. And what they do is they do actually scientifically take a look at how often... A word appears in news articles, in social media, in Google searches. And then they also compare that or combine that with the cultural significance. And I think it's fair to say that with the maxing trends, like I laughed when I saw tan maxing. Like, how is that back? That is so, oh, because I lived in the 80s and early 90s where I actually went to a tanning bed.
00:12:43
Speaker 2: But don't we always say that? They just change the names. It's the same stuff.
00:12:47
Speaker 1: I was obsessed with being tanned before I knew that it was like really terrible for your health and your skin and aging. Once I realized all of those things, I stopped tan maxing at 19. But I, you know, another trend that's coming back, which is disturbing smoking. That's a whole other episode, but.
00:13:02
Speaker 2: I saw an article on this. Smoking is coming back?
00:13:04
Speaker 1: We have seen, okay, we were just on a college campus and we were kind of shocked at how many kids we saw smoking. Like flashback to 1995 and I felt like it was scarily going back in that way. So let's hope no one's smoke maxing.
00:13:22
Speaker 2: But you saw, you've seen some, off to the side here. You've seen something.
00:13:25
Speaker 1: Where smoking is- I saw an article saying that they are starting to see a trend of kids going back to cigarettes. So let's hope smoke maxing is not- going to be a thing. But yes, we mentioned last year's winner was 6-7. But here were the other finalists. And honestly, I don't feel like any of them even came close to maxing. Affordability. That was one of them.
00:13:48
Speaker 2: Okay. I would have understood. It's not fun, but I would have understood.
00:13:53
Speaker 1: Trump would have been very upset because, yes, leading into the midterms to say the word of the year is affordability. That would have pissed him off. off there would have been a true social post anti-dictionary.com that oh my god i mean can you imagine what.
00:14:09
Speaker 2: What kind of maxing does he do uh you.
00:14:14
Speaker 1: Know what maxing insult maxing that's a really good one yes oh my god shame maxing i mean he is just yes added data center was another word of the year on the short list.
00:14:28
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have liked that one.
00:14:29
Speaker 1: No, that's boring. No, that's just, I get what they're doing with it with the whole AI, but still, that seems meh.
00:14:37
Speaker 2: Unk.
00:14:38
Speaker 1: That would have been one that I could have seen them going with. Unk.
00:14:41
Speaker 2: Unk.
00:14:41
Speaker 1: It's ask Sabine what an unk is. Basically, it's short for uncle, but what it really means is you're an uncool older person. So it's a good thing if you don't know what unk is because that means no one's called you that.
00:14:54
Speaker 2: I've never heard that. Oh, I have.
00:14:56
Speaker 1: He's an unk. He's an unk. That means he's an uncool older person. If you really want to offend somebody who's probably in their early 20s, call them an unk when they're around younger folks and suddenly they feel old and uncool.
00:15:11
Speaker 2: Is it unk supposed to be uncool or uncle?
00:15:14
Speaker 1: Oh, you know what? That's so funny. I think it's both. I didn't even think about that, but you're right. That's probably why it took off because it's short for both. It's short for uncle, and it's also short for uncool.
00:15:26
Speaker 2: We're recording this as Sabine is in tutoring right now. Two seconds as to what's an unk. Quote somebody who is or acts old.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: There you go. And then the other, the last word that was on their short list was odyssey. And I get that the movie did gangbusters and everyone was talking about it, but I haven't heard people use Odyssey in another way. But maybe they have been, and I'm just not talking to the right people.
00:15:58
Speaker 2: You know, Odysseus, is that his name? Odysseus, yes. That name jumped up in most popular baby names.
00:16:06
Speaker 1: Odysseus.
00:16:06
Speaker 2: This year, yeah. That's a tough name. It was way down low anyway. It wasn't popular, but yeah, it... It shot up.
00:16:13
Speaker 1: Just thinking of a little baby like, hey there little Odysseus.
00:16:17
Speaker 2: What would you call him?
00:16:18
Speaker 1: Odie? Odie? Is that a boy's name?
00:16:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has to be, right? Yeah, Odie.
00:16:23
Speaker 1: Odie.
00:16:24
Speaker 2: Odie.
00:16:26
Speaker 1: Oh, that doesn't sound good. You don't want anyone to Odie.
00:16:30
Speaker 2: Old Dirty.
00:16:31
Speaker 1: I was thinking of Overdose.
00:16:33
Speaker 2: I was thinking of Old Dirty Bastard. The rapper, you know? None of it's good.
00:16:37
Speaker 1: No, obviously that reference was completely lost on me and my whiteness, but You talk about, let's talk about promenades and we can keep going. No, I didn't.
00:16:47
Speaker 2: Baby, I got your money. Don't you worry. You know, nothing. Nothing.
00:16:52
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:16:53
Speaker 2: Sorry. Wow.
00:16:55
Speaker 1: I'm an unk because I just got, I just got found out.
00:16:59
Speaker 2: No, that's all right. You don't know. Oh, dirty bastard. You remember that name. So it's okay. Oh, my goodness. All right.
00:17:06
Speaker 1: What? Okay. If you were to say you max, and be in all seriousness, I know we've made some jokes. If you max anything, what would you say you blank max to this year?
00:17:15
Speaker 2: Work max.
00:17:16
Speaker 1: Work maxing.
00:17:17
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Work maxing. Oh, yeah. You know that. There have been times I thought we've been travel maxing. We're always love maxing.
00:17:29
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
00:17:31
Speaker 2: I'm always grabbing ass maxing.
00:17:35
Speaker 1: My ass, by the way, no one else's.
00:17:39
Speaker 2: You know what? I didn't think it was necessary to make the distinction, but okay. It's fair to get that.
00:17:43
Speaker 1: I just wanted to make sure everyone knew. And yeah, we were marriage maxing this year. So there you go. We have had some fun with it. And look, I, I, I wonder now that dictionary.com has made maxing its word of the year if now no one will use it anymore because now it's jumped the shark.
00:18:01
Speaker 2: Well, because I'm going to start using it. Because I wasn't that familiar. Now it's just going to be hilarious. Baby, I'm taking out the trash maxing. This is going to be bad.
00:18:11
Speaker 1: Oh, my God. What's our love is blind maxing? Hey, you want to max out some Netflix? Netflix maxing?
00:18:18
Speaker 2: Sports maxing. SEC maxing.
00:18:20
Speaker 1: That's going to happen. We all know that, yes, the March Madness maxing.
00:18:25
Speaker 2: See, it's already getting played out.
00:18:27
Speaker 1: Right? We need to stop.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: This will be done in no time.
00:18:29
Speaker 1: It's annoyance maxing is what we're doing right now.
00:18:31
Speaker 2: It'll be done in no time. All right.
00:18:32
Speaker 1: With that, everyone, have fun with the word of the year, annoying your little ones in your life. And with that, we always appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Robach, alongside TJ Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.