maxim

noun max·im \ ˈmak-səm \

|Updated on: 2 Aug 2018

Examples: maxim in a Sentence

Definition of maxim

1 : a general truth, fundamental principle, or rule of conduct

Mother's favorite maxim was "Don't count your chickens before they hatch."

2 : a proverbial saying

advised her daughter with the maxim "marry in haste, repent at leisure"

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Examples of maxim in a Sentence

it's a common maxim that “a watched pot never boils,” but that's not literally true

Recent Examples of maxim from the Web

What could cut through the political crosscurrents this year is a simple maxim: Asians vote for Asians.

— vivian yee, New York Times, "Democrats Hope Asian-American Influx Will Help Turn Orange County Blue," 3 June 2018
That maxim—a sound mind in a sound body—is the sort of bourgeois faux-wisdom that fails to equip Aickman’s civil servants to deal with the supernatural.

— josephine livingstone, The New Republic, "Weird Fiction Is Alive," 7 May 2018
Each spring, when college acceptances and rejections arrive in the mail, a simple maxim applies: The thicker the envelope, the better the news.

— alex bhattacharji, Town & Country, "Can USC Survive Scandal and Shed Its Spoiled-Kid Reputation Once and For All?," 10 July 2018
The story of Oedipus exemplifies the maxim’s meaning.

— james romm, WSJ, "‘Know Thyself’ Review: The Evolution of a Culture," 10 June 2018
There is an immovable group of pro-Trump Americans (around 40 percent in the polls) who seem to endorse the Nike-Woods maxim.

— david hawpe, The Courier-Journal, "Book review: There's more political warfare and polarization in Trump's future," 4 June 2018
Never was the old conventional maxim, that Nature cannot err, more flatly contradicted – never was the fair promise of a lovely figure more strangely and startlingly belied by the head that crowned it.

— constance grady, Vox, "Why Fahrenheit 451 still matters in the e-book era," 12 May 2018
And a common maxim among sports executives is that everybody wants to be the first to hire a woman head coach or general manager, but nobody wants to be the first to fire one.

— molly knight, Marie Claire, "Becky Hammon, Woman, Is Up for an NBA Head Coaching Job," 8 May 2018
Only when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and China’s Communists embraced a market economy did much of the world decide that the Marxist maxims on violence should go on the ash heap of history.

— The Christian Science Monitor, "Using Marx’s birthday to recall progress toward peace," 4 May 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'maxim.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Origin and Etymology of maxim

Middle English maxime, from Anglo-French, from Medieval Latin maxima, from Latin, feminine of maximus, superlative of magnus large — more at much

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First Known Use: 1567

in the meaning defined at sense 1

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