Parkinson's law
or Parkinson's Law
- the statement, expressed facetiously as if a law of physics, that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.
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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
Parkinson's law
- the notion, expressed facetiously as a law of economics, that work expands to fill the time available for its completion
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Word Origin
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
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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."
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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.”
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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.