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The 2026 Word of the Year Is Officially Here, and It’s Peak Internet Brain Rot

May God have mercy on us all. 

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It never ceases to amaze how much influence moronic guys have on the world. The suffix “-maxxing,” popularized by Clavicular—a guy famous for being unpleasant —has saturated the lexicon. “-maxxing” has been around for a while in some form or another, but like most Gen Z trends, it’s a repackaged version of an old thing, with traces of a term dating back nearly 40 years.

But as they say, it takes years of work to become an overnight success, and that’s why “maxxing” is Dictionary.com’s 2026 Word of the Year.  

According to Dictionary.com data, usage of the term exploded in digital media by August........

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