P ublic service announcement: fellow citizens, we have maxxmaxxinged. It has been close for a while, but now we have gone over the edge – reached, and passed, maximum maxxing. The tipping point was a week in which we saw reports of Namemaxxing . If you can’t decide between two baby names, pick them both. Suggestions included blending Maeve and Avery to create Mavery, or Leo and Giovanni to make Leovanni – Futupid. Then Dictionary.com revealed its word of the year and, yes, you guessed it: maxxing. It’s fully exhausting, in every way, but mainly in that -maxx has been fully exhausted. For the good of us all, 2027 has to be the year of minning. (The second “n” is important, otherwise pits may be deluged.)

Maxxing is selfish, desperately try-hard and often futile – surely nobody who ever set out to funmaxx achieved it (see: New Year’s Eve), not even Dua Lipa . Minning is much more noble: it’s about making the world, rather than only yourself, better.…