the.com/maxim

means A short, memorable statement that sums up a general truth or rule for behavior.

from From French 'maxime,' tracing back to the Latin phrase 'propositio maxima' — meaning 'greatest premise' or 'largest proposition.' In medieval logic, a maxim was the biggest, most fundamental principle from which smaller truths could be derived. Over time it shrank from 'the grandest premise in an argument' to simply any pithy saying worth remembering — the word's size shrank even as its ambition to be universally true stayed intact.