Word.ws English Dictionary

Cunningham's Law

Cunningham's Law proper noun: a humorous law of Internet forums, stating that "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer.".

cunningham's law: a humorous law of Internet forums, stating that "The best way to get the right answer on the...
Image: Carrigg Photography for the Wikimedia Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

Cunningham's Law

  1. (Internet, humorous) A humorous law of Internet forums, stating that "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."

Origin of Cunningham's Law

Supposedly proposed by programmer Ward Cunningham sometime in the early 1980s, but Cunningham himself denies having ever said it.

Questions about Cunningham's Law

What does Cunningham's Law mean?
Cunningham's Law means a humorous law of Internet forums, stating that "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer.".
What part of speech is Cunningham's Law?
Cunningham's Law is a proper noun.

Words near Cunningham's Law in the dictionary

  1. cunningham
  2. Cunningham acre
  3. Cunningham acres
  4. Cunningham chain
  5. Cunningham chains
  6. Cunningham's Law
  7. Cunninghame
  8. Cunninghamhead
  9. cunninghamia
  10. cunninghamias
  11. cunninghams

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Cunningham's Law (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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