maximalist
Part of speech: adj
noun
Morphological type: derivation
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Etymology: From maximal + -ist, by analogy with minimalist.
Base: maximal
Affixes: -ist
Inflected forms:
form: more maximalist
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most maximalist
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: Maximalist
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: maximalists
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: Maximalist
pos: noun
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: Preferring redundancy; tending to do or provide more rather than less.
pos: adj
examples: This, his [Frank Stella's] second Museum of Modern Art retrospective, shows him in his second incarnation, turning his back on Minimalist rationality and opting for a “maximalist,” seemingly free-wheeling Baroque complexity that helped set the stage for New-Expressionism.
Three elephantine examples of that trend have been in the news of late, and they call into question their underlying maximalist presumption that more is more.
Mr. Shadbolt's maximalist, when-in-doubt-be-vivid style capaciously suits “Monday's Warriors,” his novel of the wars between the Maoris and the British in New Zealand in the mid-19th century; […]
The biennial also includes a sprawling cityscape by Chris Burden incorporating thousands of model buildings, cranes and automobiles, a maximalist vision where Mr. Ashkin's is minimalist.
Bach's choral music was once often heard in maximalist renditions, undertaken by large ensembles who by sheer vocal and instrumental weight emphasize the majestic side of his compositions.
[Christian] Lacroix's maximalist aesthetic has been at odds with fashion trends in recent years. But fashion is just now beginning to swing back his way, with an emphasis on volume and flounce above sleekness.
At the moment, for example, while a minimalist aesthetic, or the tail end of one, still manifests itself in a lot of painting and music, we are living in age of maximalist novels—books less concerned with le mot juste than with being full-service entertainment centers.
You might call [Louis] Wain’s ‘mad’ style a version of the outsider mode in its paranoid or maximalist aspect.
Such a bustling, maximalist extravaganza is in keeping with the excitable energy of the crowd, who are clearly thrilled to revisit the block-party beats of Cruel Summer and tribal doo-wop of Really Sayin’ Somethin’.
Returning to the sound of her maximalist electro-pop heyday, Gaga explores buried trauma, mental illness and the complexities of fame on this return to form
[Chappell] Roan draws from the mega-pop of the 2010s, from Lady Gaga to Taylor Swift – then laces it with sexually frank asides and lavish doses of camp, and performs it with a maximalist, absurd aesthetic indebted to drag, John Waters and Freddie Mercury.
gloss: Aggressive, expansive.
pos: adj
examples: Mr. Schmidt agreed that “both the Russians and the Americans want results,” but he warned that they have a long way to go from “maximalist” starting positions.
Jo Leinen, 35 years old, a spokesman for the protest coalition, said today that the Soviet-American arms limitation talks in Geneva are a failure, and blamed the Reagan Administration for having taken “a maximalist position” that doomed the negotiations.
Administration diplomats have by now grown used to such maximalist posturing and they doubt that North Korea will go so far as to undermine the nuclear deal.
So Britain seems to have two foreign policies, a maximalist one based on illusions of the imperial past, and a minimalist one based on fears of the domestic future. It is time some-one put them together.
[…] Truman would not make available the resources and the manpower to fix the problem. He had a maximalist moment—and a maximalist document—before him. He was not ready to back a maximalist policy.
White’s detention ratchets up the rising tension between Iran and the US, which under Trump has pursued a maximalist campaign against Tehran that includes pulling out of its nuclear deal with world powers.
The Ukrainian government has noted Mr. Putin has never backed away from his maximalist demands, interpreting the goal of “demilitarizing” and “de-Nazifying” Ukraine as halting Western military assistance and installing a pro-Russian government in Kyiv.
gloss: Relating to religious or Biblical maximalism.
pos: adj
examples: Again, the progressive view was that the Mother of Jesus should receive all veneration for holiness, but not the title of mediator between God and man. Much of the Curia supported a “maximalist” cult of the Virgin.
The case of the Bar Kokhba Revolt is an excellent example of how far the Minimalist and Maximalist interpretations of biblical and even ancient history can be verified.
gloss: Relating to far-left communism.
pos: adj
tags: historical
examples: His inclusion in the official delegation to Moscow caused surprise today and was seen as indicative of the Italian Communists' aversion to Maximalist currents in international communism.
gloss: A person with maximalist beliefs or tendencies; someone who prefers redundancy or excess, especially in the arts.
pos: noun
examples: Concerning his own purpose in making music, Mr. Babbitt says he would call himself a maximalist: “I try to make music as much as it has ever been or as much as it could be. I may try to put too much into a piece. […]”
The music, of course, for all of its determined frivolity, is wonderfully eloquent, and composers as diverse as Webern, the great Minimalist, and Mahler, a great “Maximalist,” have come to worship at the shrine.
Critics have aptly borrowed those terms to characterize the difference between Mr. Beckett, for example, and his erstwhile master James Joyce, himself a maximalist except in his early works.
In the 1960's, he [Peter Gourfain] was a Minimalist, using wood beams to build allusive and ephemeral constructions. This show is primarily concerned with the artist since he became a maximalist.
A maximalist, Mr. [Craig] Baldwin is at once a collector and curator of 20th-century visual culture.
David Foster Wallace was a maximalist. His masterpiece, Infinite Jest, is a 1,000-page, polyphonic epic about addiction and obsession in millennial America.
Mohawke is known as a musical maximalist, which is a polite way of saying that he lumps prodigiously distorted beats on top of each other, as if playing techno Jenga.
gloss: A supporter of an aggressive or expansive foreign policy.
pos: noun
examples: But on the larger issues, the range of opinion on the best solution runs the gamut from the so‐called hawks, or “maximalists,” as they have come to be known, and the doves, or “minimalists.” The first group would have Israel keep most of the Arab territory she now occupies, and would postpone any significant action on the Palestinian claims until after an over‐all peace agreement was reached with the Arab states.
The policy, however, will collapse unless it produces results. If the region reverts to another stalemate of “no‐peace, no‐war,” the very cause of the October conflagration, then the initiative will pass to the Arab “maximalists,” the Iraqis, the extremist Palestinians, Colonel Qaddafi.
But now it is clear that there is no common language with the maximalists directed by Syria, and Mr. Arafat has decided to decide.
gloss: A proponent of Biblical maximalism, one who affirms the historicity of central Biblical narratives.
pos: noun
examples: The first is reported to represent the secretariat's attempted compromise between the “maximalists” and those who see the further aggrandizement of the cult of Mary as a further obstacle to a dialogue with the Protestants.
The Non-Fundamentalist Maximalists extrapolated from every single archaeological discovery an argument in favor of the authenticity of larger and larger parts of the Bible and used some of the critical Bible study information.
gloss: A Bolshevik.
pos: noun
tags: capitalized
historical
obsolete
examples: After a firm opening and an hour of fairly well sustained strength the stock market once more suffered a wide break yesterday following the receipt of the news of the overthrow of Kerensky and the announced intention of the Maximalists to propose an immediate peace with Germany.
Mr. Bernstein, who spent three months in Petrograd after the Revolution and had seen the Maximalists at work, said their aim was to bring about utter destruction not only of the freedom of the Jews, but also the freedom of all Russia.
gloss: A member of a radical wing split from the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1906.
pos: noun
tags: historical
gloss: A member of a radical Marxist party in Italy.
pos: noun
tags: historical
examples: “Maximalists,” as radical Marxists are called here, and anarchists have always had great influence in Italy's trade‐union movement.
Antonyms: minimalist
Related words: maximalism
maximist
Translations: