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
- 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

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

Anagrams

Muphry's law