Murphy's law
See also: Murphy's Law
English
Alternative forms
- Murphy's Law
Etymology
Named after Edward A. Murphy Jr. (1918–1990), a development engineer who worked for a brief time on the rocket-sled experiments of the United States Air Force in 1948.
Proper noun
Murphy's law
- An adage which states that if anything can go wrong, then it will.
- Synonyms: Sod's law, Finagle's law
- 2004, Ian Stewart, Math Hysteria, OUP Oxford, →ISBN:
- Thus we find that Murphy's Law is not a coincidence at all, but the consequence of a deep ‘anthropomurphic[sic] principle’: any universe built along conventional lines that contains intelligent polymurphs will conform to Murphy's Law.
- 2014, Muriel Spark, The Golden Fleece, Carcanet, →ISBN:
- ‘It was an application of Murphy's Law,’ said one Vatican dignitary in a resigned voice. What was Murphy's Law? ‘Murphy's Law,’ said the dignitary, ‘is that everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong.’
Coordinate terms
- Ettore's observation
- serendipity
Derived terms
- Muphry's law
Translations
adage which states that if anything can go wrong it will
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Further reading
Murphy's law on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Anagrams
- Muphry's law