Min-maxxing, looksmaxxing, and Nixon-maxxing, with Roger Kreuz

Origins of the maxing suffix

0:00Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and today I am here with Roger Cruz. He is the Associate Dean at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Memphis and a frequent contributor to Psychology Today with language pieces, which is how I discovered him. Roger, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. You had such an interesting piece about the maxing suffix and that kids are using,

0:30but now brands are using. And to me, it seems pretty new, but it actually isn't, right? It's kind of amazing how far back in time it goes. I had quite an interesting rabbit hole to go down to find its origins. It really dates back to the mid-90s with online gaming culture, people talking about min-maxing in terms of their character attributes. And then eventually it morphed into this idea of look-maxing, which comes from the manosphere online from the 2010s.

1:01And the idea became look-maxing in terms of trying to improve one's appearance and in general, their presentation to other people, either through a hard-maxing, which is like modifying your body, or soft-maxing, which is simply grooming better. So it already started to generate, you know, variant terms, even from the very beginning. I was surprised it went back to the late 90s. I mean, how these words make their way through our culture. Like, have I not heard about it just because, like, I'm not the target audience for that kind of suffix?

1:31I think what happens is that sometimes these new terms are kind of underground for a very long period of time, and they kind of break out. It's kind of like what Hemingway said about bankruptcy. It happens gradually and then suddenly. And so suddenly it seemed to really take off in the early 2020s with more mainstream publications using it. The earliest print publication I could find that used it was in 2018 in a British newspaper. And really it's still under the radar for years. I often look at New York Times references to a term to see how it's kind of trending over time.

2:04And before 2024, it had appeared just three times. In 2024, it made five appearances. In 2025, there were six. And then during the first half of this year, there were 30, which really I said that it had broken out at that point. And then the variations became endless at that point. Just once the New York Times picks it up, it becomes more mainstream. And then now it seems like brands, there was a Wall Street Journal had a recent article about brands are starting to use maxing in their marketing campaigns. It's a perfect way to kill it. Because as soon as

2:37commerce is involved, these things tend to really take a nosedive. It reminded me of a few years ago, the term on fleek, which meant that you're perfectly groomed like your eyebrows. And brands like IHOP started using it in their advertising. And on fleek just nosedived after that. Nobody wanted to be associated with that term who is younger than, you know, 30. And so it's funny how as soon as these things are co-opted by older people or by companies, then the kids don't want to use it at all anymore. Yesterday, I joked online that when I was editing, I was prose maxing. And

3:11someone replied, that's the best way to kill it is like for all of us old people to start using it as much as we possibly can. Right. I mean, it's really interesting that it came from sort of this, I don't know, I mean, yeah, maybe just reputable area, you know, looks mask, hard looks maxing is very controversial and, and dangerous in a lot of ways. And then now we have like brands using it to market orange juice or something like that. Like, like, is this just a case of linguistic semantic bleaching?

3:41Yeah, I think a lot of these terms really do change. As they become more mainstream, the meaning becomes a little bit less sharp. And exactly what's being referred to can be kind of lost in the process. So I think bleaching is a really common fate for a lot of slang terms. Linguistically, is it a suffix? Or is it something else? You know, it kind of makes me think of a suffix, but it also is more maybe like sitting and babysitting. And it can be inflected as a verb. So you can say, he's a looks max, er, you know, I mean, that's turning into a noun, but it can be like

4:13all different parts of speech. I think that's one of the reasons that has become so commonly used is that it is this chimera can appear in all sorts of different contexts, and attached to other kinds of words. And yeah, I think it's to refer to as a suffix isn't probably exactly right. It really does seem to have a life of its own and kind of goes beyond what a lot of suffixes normally do in language. Did any way to older slang, like, you know, when I was a kid, we'd say we were doing something to the max. Or, you know, my parents might talk about maxing out their credit card. Is it sort of a

4:45natural extension of those? Or is it maybe a separate thing? I think that's probably where this gaming terminology began. Min-maxing is very close to the idea of maxing out a credit card, for example. And it's interesting how in that verbal form it was actually used in relatively few contexts. And then the idea is that once it becomes attached to a word like looks, then suddenly it seems to break out and people start using it in all sorts of creative ways. What is the min in min-maxing? Minimizing. So you might want to minimize certain characteristics of your character on an online game and maximize others.

5:15So it's not like looks maxing. You're not maxing something that's the min. It's sort of a two sides of the different things you could do to your character. Right. Oh, interesting. So it's even sort of changed that way. Someone else joked that, well, if we have maxing, why don't we have minning? You know, if I go to roll out of bed and go to the grocery store without brushing my hair, I'm like, looks minning. Right. So why don't we? But that doesn't seem to happen a lot with slang that it develops, you know, a whole sphere of words around it. Like it's like an opposite. Why don't we get like

5:51opposites of slang like that? I think it's really hard to predict what's going to become popular and not. You can imagine that on fleek could have become off fleek when you appear disheveled. But it never did because it never really expanded to that degree, not to the degree that the maxing particle has

Why slang succeeds and fails

6:08expanded, I think. I mean, let's talk about why things succeed and why they fail. You know, there are some older connectors or extensions like this. I was thinking of like Licious. We had Fergalicious and Bootylicious and we don't really use that much anymore. What are some other older ones that haven't survived? I'm not sure if this one's still around or not, but Palooza was a term that people would use detaching to different kinds of words. I'm so sad about that. We call our membership program, they are our Grammar Paloozians.

6:41We have a Grammar Palooza. So we actually use Palooza. And I saw in your article that you mentioned that as a suffix that's gone, but it's not God in my world. Okay. Fair enough. But like Cation, we have staycation, but I don't hear any other Cations. So what makes something stick, whereas other things kind of don't? Yeah. I mean, I've thought about it quite a bit and I think it's just really hard to predict the creativity of people using the language. And some things really seem to be

7:12fun. Some things don't. I think just saying maxing is kind of fun. It has a certain kind of sound to it that I think people like making. Just like Palooza is kind of fun, right? I think that's a really big part of it because nobody is being, there are no grammar police enforcing that a certain kind of slang be used. People use it because they enjoy using it. They enjoy hearing it. They enjoy saying it. It's interesting you talk about sort of grammar police because people write maxing with two Xs, which is a little odd. And I was wondering if those extra Xs draw attention. And like X is a

7:45commonly used letter in marketing anyway. Like people seem to like the letter X. Yeah. Because it's a little bit unusual in English. Two Xs is really unusual. And I think it also, of course, provides some guidance on how to pronounce it. One X might mean that it's maxing, but this makes it clear it's maxing. So it kind of tells you even how to pronounce it in a way. Yeah. And what about gate? What about the gate suffix? That's another one that's been really successful. Yeah. I've actually written about that. Wikipedia has an entry for gate listing all the gates

8:17that have been used over time. And there are several hundred of these that have been employed, obviously, in some cases for very minor kinds of issues. But in some cases, obviously, things are more consequential. And by applying that gate particle, you're automatically kind of raising the importance of something. So if somebody, I don't know, left Legos on the carpet and you stepped on them, it would be Lego gate. And now it's a big deal. So that's a way of intensifying some idea. Right. This is going to be an ongoing, world-changing catastrophe. Scandal.

8:50And now it's used just ironically that way. So if it's a small thing and making it a big thing, there's ironic usage as well that people like, I think. You know, I was wondering about ironic usage in whether things take off, because, you know, I'm pretty sure that the people, all the people who talk about coffee maxing or, you know, our own Modern Mentor podcast had a show about success maxing a few weeks ago. And I think that

9:23was a little bit tongue in cheek, maybe ironic. How does the ability to use it that way or people using it that way increase its chance of success? Or is it more likely to make it a flash in the pan? I think it probably does add to the chances that people are going to use it because they're going to think of all kinds of novel, interesting ways to use it. And it's a way of showing off your linguistic creativity. I think that's really just casual conversation. People want to be perceived as being witty and clever and using current slang in a new or unusual way,

9:56I think as a way to be seen in a very positive light. Yeah. And I mean, we can think about like communities that grow up around these words, maybe some of the looks maxing communities aren't super healthy, but maybe some are. And then there's other suffixes too, like core. You know, I think cottage core and things like that aren't just a way of describing an activity or a look, but they also let people form communities, especially on places like TikTok, where you can use hashtags and connect with other people who have the same interests. Have you looked at TikTok and the way it, if it has any sort of

10:32different ways of propelling things linguistically into the world? I personally avoid TikTok the way that you would avoid an addicting drug, because it just scares me that I would just scroll for forever. But it does seem like that's a really important vector for modern linguistic developments. That seems to be a very important way in which these things spread. Because, you know, a couple of generations ago, before we had social media, before the internet, I think things spread more slowly. And now, of course, things can spread literally overnight.

11:06And so that really changes the way in which the language is developing and developing diversity in a very short period of time. Yeah. And we can think about these things as just words for describing an activity or a look. But if someone talks about looks maxing, can it change how they think about the activity itself? I think so. Because it goes from, you know, I made a point of combing my hair this morning to

11:37I was looks maxing this morning, suddenly it becomes part of this larger kind of activity that's perhaps viewed in a different way than just, you know, referring to the activity in a more mundane sort of way. Right. It almost becomes part of an identity, because there can also be that community around it. And there's some other words that's that same looks maxing world has other words to like mogging, which I'm not even sure what that means. And I wonder if that's why it hasn't caught on. You know, one thing about looks maxing is you can kind of guess at the meeting, but with some of the

12:11other ones, it's a little harder. But then on fleek, I never could have guessed either. So I mean, how much of a role does comprehensibility play in adoption of in sticking power of these words? Well, interestingly, I think at least for people who are using them, not ironically, if it's a little bit hard to understand, that's kind of the point. You know, a few months ago, when six and seven was a big deal among young kids, and they didn't really want to have it pinned down in terms of what it actually did mean. And I think that kind of contributed to the cachet that

12:42the term had, because it was a way of, you know, telling us olds that, you know, you're, you're not with it, you're missing out in some, you know, subculture that we are developing as kids. So I think that when things aren't transparent to people not in that demographic, I think that actually adds to their allure, at least in some cases. Yeah, thinking about the opposites thing we were talking about before, I was a little bit surprised that, that after six, seven started to fade out, that the kids didn't come up with like eight, nine, just to confound us more.

13:14Right. That will certainly confounded me, I think. That's right. I know a lot of adults can be annoyed by these terms, but it's really a normal, healthy part of child, teen, young adult culture. I mean, adults do it at work, too. They're actually, this reminds me, there's some really funny videos out there now, about people making up corporate jargon, and just using it at work to try to get other people to use it with that social activity. Have you seen those?

13:44Have not, no. No, they're hilarious. And I think from a sociolinguistic perspective, they're also really interesting. You know, people will, they show adults, you know, making up like, oh, we're, we're pickle partying this meeting till Tuesday, and we're gonna quadrangle back on it later, you know, and, and then other people at the company start using those terms, because they think that must be the words we use. It's a really interesting balance, because on the on the one hand, you want to be seen as

14:14being contemporary with language usage, but you can also come across as being really out of touch, if you are not really in the demographic that normally uses those kinds of terms. So it's very hard for somebody older than maybe 25, I would say to, to use current slang, without kids just, you know, rolling their eyes out of their heads, at the idea that there's this old person who's trying to, you know, be hip with the language. So it's, it's, it's, it's a delicate thing.

Peak maxing and ironic slang

14:43What is the most ridiculous maxing term you came across when in your research? Just three days ago, the Washington Post had a headline that used the word Nixon maxing. And it was a reference to young Republicans, young conservatives who are trying to rehabilitate the reputation of Richard Nixon. So Nixon maxing is apparently a thing now, which I had no idea and thought, yeah, this is probably peak maxing. We're going to have, you know, dead presidents who are going to be maxing. That's probably as far as this development is going to go, I would guess

15:14anyway. Oh, that's ridiculous. But it has that other X in it. It's kind of hard to say, but it has that X in it. And are there any maxing terms that you actually use non-ironically or, or kind of want to? I've been having seen dozens and dozens of these things. I think that at this point it's really used more ironically than anything else. And the problem with terms as I slip into ironic speech is that nobody is really sure if you're being serious or not. I mean, if you or I use the term groovy, people would probably get, yeah, we're using that ironically because it's not

15:48current slang, but with contemporary slang, when it starts to slide into that area of ironic usage, then becomes quite problematic because nobody really knows exactly what you mean, what you're saying, or the exact opposite of that. Or if you're serious. Yeah. You can imagine somebody who looks very disheveled in the morning saying, I was look maxing. And that'd be funny, right? But irony is a slippery thing. That's certainly true. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for being here. Again, Roger Cruz from the University

16:18of Memphis. Where can people find you online? Do you have books that people might want to check out or a good webpage? Yeah, I've got an author website at rogercruz.net. That's K-R-E-U-Z. Yes, to make that clear. And I'm on Blue Sky. I'm on LinkedIn, you know, the usual sorts of things for academics anyway. So yeah, I'm pretty easily found online. Wonderful. Well, thank you for joining us today for our podcast maxing experience.

16:49Thank you so much. You're welcome. And for our Grammar Pelusians, you are not out of date, number one. And number two, we have a bonus segment for you with Roger. We're going to talk about etymological conspiracy theories. It's going to be really fun. So check for that in your feed. If you want to become a Grammar Pelusian, it'd be very cool. It is that you can join that at patreon.com slash Grammar Girl. And for everyone else, that's all. Thanks for listening.

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