maximism

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noun

A tendency toward excess and extravagance.

Scrabble 21

Meanings

nounmaximism (uncountable)
  1. uncountableA tendency toward excess and extravagance.

    If boondockers want minimalism, glampers want maximism.

    2021, Christopher Hodapp, Alice Von Kannon, RVs & Campers For Dummies, page 16
    1 more example

    After the minimalism of the past, fashion is witnessing a peaking of maximism.

    2005, Kanika Gahlaut, India Today - Volume 30, page 66
  2. uncountableThe tendency to maximize the application of a particular approach or to strive for maximum acquisition of a particular resource; extremism.

    It goes with fondness for moralising over life– an ethical maximism that belongs to the age.

    1906, William Shakespeare, John Macmillan Brown, The Merchant of Venice: A Study, page 54
    4 more examples

    Larin's radicalism in particular, and the era's maximism in general, demanded that the old bourgeois be removed from industry entirely.

    1945, Simon Isaevich Liberman, Building Lenin's Russia, page 26

    There is much reason to believe that, even in the dogmas of immaculate conception and assumption, the Holy See has acted chiefly as a restraint on the "mariologial maximism" of the body of the faithful.

    1970, The Critic - Volume 29, page 67

    Jabotinsky's Revisionist ideology had three main ideas: hadar (dignity and pride), monism, and territorial maximism.

    2013, Thomas G. Mitchell, Israel/Palestine and the Politics of a Two-State Solution, page 29

    Amongst the implications we identify the following: management and leadership; arbitration and advocacy; entitlement and surveillance; bureaucratic maximism and minimalism.

    2021, Routledge Library Editions: Special Educational Needs, page 166
  3. uncountablelifestyleA belief that religious observances should be applied as widely as possible.

    […] maximism of the Cluniacs on the one hand and the minimism of puritanic Cistercianism on the other.

    1918, Edmund Bishop, Liturgica Historica, page 229
    3 more examples

    As to minimism and maximism — microscopic and telescopic tendencies — the cosmical laws are themselves of such vast range that we should naturally expect the greatest embodiments to have occurred first, as in the case of a thousand Suns and Jupiters they manifestly did.

    1872, Henry Thomas Braithwaite, Esse and posse, page 56

    […] theologians were puzzled by Newman's apparent combination of liberalism and ultramontanism, of maximism and minimism.

    1912, The Nineteenth Century and After, volume 72, page 70

    The monks' practice of "eschatological maximism” did not make them a group apart from the rest of the Church.

    1966, Cistercian Studies - Volume 24, page 179
Cite this entry
APA

maximism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/maximism

MLA

“maximism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/maximism. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “maximism,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/maximism.

Source: maximism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.