"Maxim" meaning in English

See Maxim in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proper name

Forms: Maxims [plural], Maxam [alternative], Maxim gun [alternative], maxim gun [alternative], maxim [alternative]
Etymology: * As a given name, from Latin Maximus (“greatest”), superlative of magnus (“great”). Borne by several early Christian saints. * As a French or Dutch surname, from the given name. * For the machine gun, named after American and British inventor Hiram Maxim (1840–1916). Etymology templates: {{der|en|la|-}} Latin, {{glossary|superlative}} superlative, {{yesno|1|n|N}} n, {{named-after/list|inventor||||}} inventor, {{!}} |, {{lang|en|Hiram Maxim}} Hiram Maxim, {{named-after|en|Hiram Maxim|born=1840|died=1916|nat=American and British|nocap=1|occ=inventor|wplink==}} named after American and British inventor Hiram Maxim (1840–1916) Head templates: {{en-proper-noun|s}} Maxim (plural Maxims)
  1. A male given name from Latin.
    Sense id: en-Maxim-en-name-XC4~mcw6 Categories (other): English given names, English male given names
  2. A surname from French or from Dutch [in turn transferred from the given name, in turn from Latin].
    Sense id: en-Maxim-en-name-rM1qCo0K Categories (other): English surnames

Noun

Forms: Maxims [plural], Maxam [alternative], Maxim gun [alternative], maxim gun [alternative], maxim [alternative]
Etymology: * As a given name, from Latin Maximus (“greatest”), superlative of magnus (“great”). Borne by several early Christian saints. * As a French or Dutch surname, from the given name. * For the machine gun, named after American and British inventor Hiram Maxim (1840–1916). Etymology templates: {{der|en|la|-}} Latin, {{glossary|superlative}} superlative, {{yesno|1|n|N}} n, {{named-after/list|inventor||||}} inventor, {{!}} |, {{lang|en|Hiram Maxim}} Hiram Maxim, {{named-after|en|Hiram Maxim|born=1840|died=1916|nat=American and British|nocap=1|occ=inventor|wplink==}} named after American and British inventor Hiram Maxim (1840–1916) Head templates: {{en-noun}} Maxim (plural Maxims)
  1. (firearms) Synonym of Maxim gun. Synonyms: Maxim gun [synonym, synonym-of]
    Sense id: en-Maxim-en-noun-spAXu90S Categories (other): Firearms, English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 2 entries, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 9 16 75 Disambiguation of Pages with 2 entries: 16 25 59 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 10 20 70 Topics: engineering, firearms, government, military, natural-sciences, physical-sciences, politics, tools, war, weaponry

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

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Download raw JSONL data for Maxim meaning in English (4.4kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-10-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-10-01 using wiktextract (f9fe161 and 6f96ddf). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.