Murphy’s law
E602471
Murphy’s law is the adage that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, often cited to express the inevitability of errors or misfortune.
All labels observed (4)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Finagle’s law | 1 |
| Murphy’s law canonical | 1 |
| Murphy’s law variants | 1 |
| Sod’s law | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T6557859 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Murphy’s law Context triple: [Murphy Cooper, namedAfter, Murphy’s law]
-
A.
Murphy's Law
"Murphy's Law" is the debut studio album by American rapper Murphy Lee, showcasing his St. Louis hip hop style and featuring collaborations with prominent artists from the St. Lunatics and beyond.
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B.
Cunningham's Law
Cunningham's Law is an internet adage stating that the best way to get the right answer online is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer.
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C.
Aitken’s Law
Aitken’s Law is a phonological rule in Scots and Scottish English that governs when vowels are pronounced long or short depending on their phonetic and morphological environment.
-
D.
Kluge's law
Kluge's law is a proposed sound law in Proto-Germanic historical linguistics that explains the development of certain geminate consonants from earlier consonant clusters.
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E.
Sturgeon's Law
Sturgeon's Law is an adage stating that "ninety percent of everything is crap," highlighting the prevalence of low-quality work in any field.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Murphy’s law Target entity description: Murphy’s law is the adage that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, often cited to express the inevitability of errors or misfortune.
-
A.
Murphy's Law
"Murphy's Law" is the debut studio album by American rapper Murphy Lee, showcasing his St. Louis hip hop style and featuring collaborations with prominent artists from the St. Lunatics and beyond.
-
B.
Cunningham's Law
Cunningham's Law is an internet adage stating that the best way to get the right answer online is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer.
-
C.
Aitken’s Law
Aitken’s Law is a phonological rule in Scots and Scottish English that governs when vowels are pronounced long or short depending on their phonetic and morphological environment.
-
D.
Kluge's law
Kluge's law is a proposed sound law in Proto-Germanic historical linguistics that explains the development of certain geminate consonants from earlier consonant clusters.
-
E.
Sturgeon's Law
Sturgeon's Law is an adage stating that "ninety percent of everything is crap," highlighting the prevalence of low-quality work in any field.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (49)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
adage
ⓘ
epigram ⓘ proverb ⓘ |
| appearsIn |
books of quotations
ⓘ
cartoons ⓘ jokes ⓘ self-help and business literature ⓘ |
| appliedAs |
argument for testing and quality assurance
ⓘ
heuristic for planning ⓘ motivation for robust design ⓘ warning to anticipate failure ⓘ |
| associatedWithField |
aerospace testing
ⓘ
systems engineering ⓘ |
| associatedWithPerson | Edward A. Murphy Jr. ⓘ |
| culturalOrigin |
United States
ⓘ
linked to:
United States of America
|
| describes |
inevitability of errors
ⓘ
perceived bias toward negative outcomes ⓘ pessimistic expectation of failure ⓘ tendency of things to go wrong ⓘ |
| hasAlternativeName |
Finagle’s law
ⓘ
linked to:
Murphy’s law
Sod’s law ⓘ
linked to:
Murphy’s law
if anything can go wrong, it will ⓘ law of selective gravity ⓘ |
| hasConnotation |
dark humor
ⓘ
fatalism ⓘ pessimism ⓘ |
| hasGeneralization | Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, at the worst possible time ⓘ |
| hasNotableFormulation | If there is a wrong way to do something, then someone will do it that way ⓘ |
| hasShortForm | Anything that can go wrong will go wrong ⓘ |
| influenced |
Murphy’s law variants
ⓘ
linked to:
Murphy’s law
engineering folklore ⓘ humorous pseudo-laws ⓘ office humor ⓘ |
| relatedConcept |
confirmation bias
ⓘ
defensive design ⓘ entropy ⓘ law of unintended consequences ⓘ pessimism bias ⓘ redundancy in engineering ⓘ risk assessment ⓘ safety margins ⓘ second law of thermodynamics ⓘ |
| usedInContext |
aerospace engineering
ⓘ
engineering ⓘ everyday life ⓘ popular culture ⓘ project management ⓘ risk management ⓘ software development ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Murphy’s law Description of subject: Murphy’s law is the adage that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, often cited to express the inevitability of errors or misfortune.
Referenced by (4)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
linked to: Murphy’s law
linked to: Murphy’s law
linked to: Murphy’s law