Hunch. Dictionary.com found on 26 October that 'maxxing' was used nineteen times more in August than in 2025, and Oxford picks its word from usage data.
Resolves YES if by 31 December 2026 Oxford University Press names 'maxxing' or another form with '-maxx' as its 2026 word of the year, or as one of several words of the year as it did in 2020. Any other word is NO, and if the Oxford page does not open, BBC News and Guardian reports of the announcement decide.
We looked for cases where Oxford named its word of the year after another big English dictionary had already named its own word that year. We found ten such years, from 2015 to 2025, and in each of them Collins went before Oxford.