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Parkinson's law

or Parkinson's Law

noun
  1. the statement, expressed facetiously as if a law of physics, that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.

Origin of Parkinson's law

First recorded in 1950–55; after C. N. Parkinson
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
British Dictionary definitions for parkinson's law

Parkinson's law

noun
  1. the notion, expressed facetiously as a law of economics, that work expands to fill the time available for its completion

Word Origin for Parkinson's law

C20: named after C. N. Parkinson (1909–93), British historian and writer, who formulated it
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for parkinson's law

Parkinson's Law

1955 (in the "Economist" of Nov. 19), named for its deviser, British historian and journalist Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1909-1993): "work expands to fill the time available for its completion."

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
parkinson's law in Culture

Parkinson's Law

A law propounded by the twentieth-century British scholar C. Northcote Parkinson. It states, “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.