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

1. An adage which states that if anything can go wrong, then it will.

   Synonyms: Sod's law, Finagle's law

   • 1953, Anne Roe, The Making of a Scientist, page 214:

     I ran into the perfect exemplification of “Murphy's law” at one university, where everything that could go wrong did!

   • 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

• Basque: Murphyren legea
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 摩菲定理 (Mófēi dìnglǐ), 墨菲定律 (Mòfēi dìnglǜ)

• Czech: Murphyho zákon m
• Finnish: Murphyn laki (fi)
• French: loi de Murphy (fr) f
• German: Murphys Gesetz (de) n
• Greek: νόμος του Μέρφυ (el) (nómos tou Mérfy)
• Hungarian: Murphy törvénye
• Japanese: マーフィーの法則 (Māfī-no hōsoku)
• Korean: 머피의 법칙 (meopiui beopchik)
• Norwegian: Loven om tingenes iboende faenskap.
• Portuguese: Lei de Murphy f
• Russian: зако́н по́длости (ru) m (zakón pódlosti), зако́н Мёрфи m (zakón Mjórfi)
• Spanish: ley de Murphy f
• Swedish: lagen om alltings jävlighet (sv), lagen om alltings inneboende ondska, Murphys lag
• Turkish: Murphy kanunları pl

Further reading

• Murphy's law on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• Muphry's law