Language in the age of AI: Whimsymaxxing the apocalypse

Cake pop is half-cake, half-lollipop. Picture a skewered Malteser, the treat a novelty on the language radar. Around September, dictionaries like America’s Merriam-Webster get a glow-up (another newbie) by looksmaxxing (a third) their database, adding some new 1400 words.

Food overall has been restless, the menu extended by chilli crisp, bao bun and a Japanese pepper called shishito. Far less tasty is promposal, a date you take to your year 12 dance. Though copium is handier, a hybrid of cope and opium, the stuff of stubborn optimism despite worsening news.

Much of Merriam’s intake is the obvious, as often happens in Lexi-Land. Terms like yacht rock have seemed to be around since Steely Dan first crooned. Ditto for neckbeard and whack-a-mole, Rickroll and Mandela effect – a syndrome where hordes share one false memory. Cuffing season does not relate to mass arrests or bedroom play but a pre-winter phase compelling singles to pair up, the dating equivalent of swooping season minus the maggies. Meanwhile shapewear explains itself, as does the weekday worker’s bout of Sunday scaries.

But let’s get back to -maxxing, that suffix busy “promposing” a dozen stems across the dictionary. Back in August, The Guardian’s Tim Dowling built a true/false quiz of 20 possible -maxxing match-ups, from Catholicmaxxing (exploiting RC iconography) to hobbitmaxxing (living a simpler, barefoot life). To save you the gotcha, all 20 were legit citations, including whimsymaxxing and bootymaxxing (alias bum-maxxing in the UK).

Ridic, you say. Or ridiculous, if you’re over 30. Yet I predict a few maxxes will make the haul into 2027, even if serving as rage bait, where editing now answers to textmaxxing, or a swim session is lapmaxxing, just to rankle the purists. Staying at the pool, I applaud the work of Bilal El-Hayek, the lord mayor of Canterbury-Bankstown, for hastening a new piece of slang into English. Only last week his council authorised pool staff to eject anybody wearing smart glasses, adding, “There’s a buzz and growing anger in the community about the increasing use of AI smart glasses, or ‘pervert glasses’.” Splash! The snarkier label is now official.

AI, of course, is the other accelerant when it comes to coining words. This month, on quitting Anthropic, researcher Jacob Coxon predicted an AI apocalypse “could kill us all by the end of the decade”. Overnight the commentariat went into ethicsmaxxing (a word, claimed the Guardian quiz) as word nerds took to brainstorming, seeking an apt label for the doomsday scenario.

T2 is one idea, a nod to Terminator 2: Judgement Day from 1991. Though even Miles Dyson – the movie’s engineer at Cyberdyne – tries to unplug the killer robot. The sexy apocalypse is another phrase angling for traction, as somehow this encroaching hell storm owns a new-world rizz (charisma) in the eyes of some, compared to the humdrum bleakness (relief centres, water rations) of your average disaster.

Ever helpful, AI itself is more than ready to suggest names for its own eradication of humankind, from data-geddon to code-quake, from silicon supremacy to The Great Rewrite. Chilling stuff on paper, and maybe more reason to rejoice in whimsymaxxing, or bliss out with yacht rock, licking a cake pop with a dollop of copium.