1221. This week, we talk to Roger Kreuz, associate dean at the University of Memphis, about the "maxxing" craze. We look at how it started with min-maxxing in 1990s gaming culture, how looksmaxxing spread from the manosphere, and why it isn't quite a suffix. Then we look at what that second X is doing, why "Nixon-maxxing" might be peak maxxing, and why a brand picking up your slang usually kills it.
1221. This week, we talk to Roger Kreuz, associate dean at the University of Memphis, about the "maxxing" craze. We look at how it started with min-maxxing in 1990s gaming culture, how looksmaxxing spread from the manosphere, and why it isn't quite a suffix. Then we look at what that second X is doing, why "Nixon-maxxing" might be peak maxxing, and why a brand picking up your slang usually kills it.
Find Roger Kreuz on his website, RogerKreuz.net.
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[Computer-generated transcript]
Mignon Fogarty: Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and today I am here with Roger Kreuz. 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.
Roger: Thank you.
Mignon: You had such an interesting piece about the "-maxxing" suffix, and that kids are using, but now brands are using. And to me, it seems pretty new, but it actually isn't, right?
Roger: Yeah, 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-maxxing in terms of like their character attributes. And then eventually it morphed into this idea of looksmaxxing, which comes from the manosphere online from the 2010s.
And the idea became looksmaxxing in terms of trying to improve one's appearance and in general their presentation to other people, either through hardmaxxing, which is like modifying your body, or softmaxxing, which is simply grooming better. So it already started to generate variant terms even from the very beginning.
Mignon: 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 I'm not the target audience for that kind of suffix?
Roger: I 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 stayed 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. And 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 variation became endless at that point.
Mignon: I guess once The New York Times picks it up, it becomes more mainstream. And then now it seems like brands, the Wall Street Journal had a recent article about brands starting to use maxxing in their marketing campaigns.
Roger: Is a perfect way to kill it, because as soon as commerce 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 were 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 was younger than 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.
Mignon: Yesterday, I joked online that when I was editing, I was prose-maxxing, and someone 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.
Roger: Right.
Mignon: It's really interesting that it came from sort of this, I mean, yeah, a disreputable area. Hard looksmaxxing is very controversial and dangerous in a lot of ways, and then now we have brands using it to market orange juice or something like that. Is this just a case of linguistic semantic bleaching?
Roger: Yeah, 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.
Mignon: And linguistically is it a suffix or is it something else? It kind of makes me think of a suffix, but it also is maybe more like sitting and babysitting, and it can be inflected as a verb. So you can say, "He's a looksmaxxer." That's turning into a noun, but it can be all different parts of speech.
Roger: I think that's one of the reasons that it's become so commonly used, is that it is this chimera. It can appear in all sorts of different contexts and attached to other kinds of words. And yeah, to refer to it 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.
Mignon: Is it in any way related to older slang, like when I was a kid we'd say we were doing something to the max, or my parents might talk about maxing out their credit card? Is it a natural extension of those, or is it a separate thing?
Roger: I think that's probably where this gaming terminology began. Min-maxxing 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.
Mignon: What is the "min" in min-maxxing?
Roger: Minimizing. So you might want to minimize certain characteristics of your character in an online game and maximize others.
Mignon: Okay, so it's not like looksmaxxing. You're not maxing something that's the min; it's sort of two sides of the different things you could do to your character.
Roger: Right.
Mignon: Oh, interesting. So it's even sort of changed that way. Someone else joked that, "Well, if we have maxxing, why don't we have minning?" If I roll out of bed and go to the grocery store without brushing my hair, I'm looks-minning. But why don’t… That doesn't seem to happen a lot with slang, that it develops a whole sphere of words around it like an opposite. Why don't we get opposites of slang like that?
Roger: I think it's really hard to predict what's going to become popular and not. You could imagine that "on fleek" could have become "off fleek" for when you appeared disheveled, but it never did because it never really expanded to that degree, not to the degree that the maxxing particle has expanded, I think.
Mignon: Yeah, I mean, let's talk about why things succeed and why they fail. There are some older connectors or extensions like this. I was thinking of "-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?
Roger: I'm not sure if this one's still around or not, but "palooza" was a term that people would use, attaching to different kinds of words from "lollapalooza."
Mignon: I'm so sad about that. We call our membership program, they are our Grammarpaloozians. We have Grammarpalooza, 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 gone in my world.
Roger: Okay. Fair enough.
Mignon: But like "-cation," we have "staycation," but I don't hear any other "-cations." So, what makes some things stick whereas other things kind of don't?
Roger: Yeah, I've thought about it quite a bit, and I think it's just really hard to predict the creativity of people using language, and some things really seem to be fun, some things don't. I think just saying "maxxing" 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 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.
Mignon: It's interesting you talk about sort of grammar police, because people write "maxxing" with two X's, which is a little odd, and I was wondering if those extra X's draw attention. X is a commonly used letter in marketing anyway. Like people seem to like the letter X.
Roger: Yeah, because it's a little bit unusual in English. Two X's is really unusual, and I think it also provides some guidance on how to pronounce it when one X might mean that it's "macksing," but this makes it clear it's "maxing." So it kind of tells you even how to pronounce it in a way.
Mignon: Yeah. And what about "-gate"? What about the "-gate" suffix? That's another one that's been really successful.
Roger: Yeah, I've actually written about that. Wikipedia has an entry for "-gate" listing all the "-gates" that 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 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.
Mignon: Right. This is going to be an ongoing, world-changing catastrophe scandal.
Roger: And now it's used just ironically that way. So if it's a small thing, you're making it a big thing. There's ironic usage as well that people like, I think.
Mignon: Yeah. I was wondering about ironic usage in whether things take off because I'm pretty sure that all the people who talk about coffee-maxxing or our own "Modern Mentor" podcast had a show about success-maxxing a few weeks ago, and I think that was a little bit tongue-in-cheek. Maybe ironic. 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?
Roger: 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, in just casual conversation, people want to be perceived as being witty and clever, and using current slang in a new or unusual way I think is a way to be seen in a very positive light.
Mignon: Yeah. And I mean, we can think about like communities that grow up around these words. Maybe some of the looksmaxxing communities aren't super healthy, but maybe some are. And then there's other suffixes too, like "-core." I think, like cottagecore 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 different ways of propelling things linguistically into the world?
Roger: 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. A couple of generations ago, before we had social media and before the internet, I think things spread a little more slowly, and now, of course, things can spread literally overnight, and so that really changes the way in which the language is developing and developing diversity in a very short period of time.
Mignon: Yeah. And we can think about these things as just words for describing an activity or a look, but if someone talks about looksmaxxing and does that, can it change how they think about the activity itself?
Roger: I think so, because it goes from "I made a point of combing my hair this morning" to "I was looksmaxxing this morning." Suddenly, it becomes part of this larger kind of activity that's perhaps viewed in a different way than just referring to the activity in a more mundane sort of way.
Mignon: Right, it almost becomes part of an identity because there can also be that community around it. And that same looksmaxxing world has other words too, like "mogging," which I'm not even sure what that means. And then I wonder if that's why it hasn't caught on. One thing about looksmaxxing is you can kind of guess at the meaning, but with some of the other ones, it's a little harder. But then "on fleek," I never could have guessed either. So, how much of a role does comprehensibility play in the adoption of, in the sticking power of these words?
Roger: Well, interestingly, I think at least for people who are using them non-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, 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 cache’ that the term had, because it was a way of telling us olds that, "You're not with it. You're missing out on some 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.
Mignon: Yeah. Thinking about the opposites thing we were talking about before, I was a little bit surprised that after "six-seven" started to fade out, that the kids didn't come up with like "eight-nine" just to confound us more.
Roger: Right. That well, that certainly confounded me, I think. That's right.
Mignon: And 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. Actually, this reminds me. There are 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?
Roger: I have not, no.
Mignon: No, they're hilarious, and I think from a sociolinguistic perspective, they're also really interesting. They show people show adults making up, "Oh, we're pickle-parting this meeting till Tuesday, and we're going to quadrangle back on it later." And then other people at the company start using those terms because they think that must be the words we use.
Roger: It's a real interesting balance, because on the one hand you want to be seen as being 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 use current slang without kids just rolling their eyes out of their heads at the idea that there's this old person who's trying to be hip with the language. So it's a delicate thing.
Mignon: What is the most ridiculous maxxing term you came across in your research?
Roger: Just three days ago, The Washington Post had a headline that used the word "Nixon-maxxing," and it was a reference to young Republicans, young conservatives who are trying to rehabilitate the reputation of Richard Nixon. So "Nixon-maxxing" is apparently a thing now, which I had no idea and thought, yeah, this is probably peak maxxing. We're going to have dead presidents who are going to be maxxing. That is probably as far as this development's going to go, I would guess anyway.
Mignon: 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 maxxing terms that you actually use non-ironically, or kind of want to?
Roger: 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 they slip into ironic speech is that nobody's ever really sure if you're being serious or not. I mean, if you or I used the term "groovy," people would probably get, yeah, we're using that ironically because it's not current slang. But with contemporary slang, when it starts to slide into that area of ironic usage, then it becomes quite problematic because nobody really knows exactly what you mean, what you're saying or the exact opposite of that.
Mignon: Or if you’re serious.
Roger: You can imagine somebody who looks very disheveled in the morning saying, "I was looksmaxxing," and that'd be funny, right? But irony is a slippery thing, that's certainly true.
Mignon: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for being here. Again, Roger Kreuz from the University of Memphis. Where can people find you online? Do you have books that people might want to check out or a good webpage?
Roger: Yeah, I've got an author website at rogerkreuz.net.
Mignon: That’s K-R-E-U-Z.
Roger: Yes, to make that clear, huh? Yeah. And I'm on Bluesky, I'm on LinkedIn, the usual sorts of things for academics anyway. So yeah, I'm pretty easily found online.
Mignon: Wonderful. Well, thank you for joining us today for our podcast-maxxing experience.
Roger: Thank you so much.
Mignon: You're welcome. And for our Grammarpaloozians, 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 Grammarpaloozian and be very cool, you can join that at patreon.com/grammargirl. And for everyone else, that's all. Thanks for listening.