Word.ws English Dictionary

Finagle's law

Finagle's law proper noun: an adage which states that if anything can go wrong, then it will at the worst possible moment.

Proper noun

Finagle's law

  1. An adage which states that if anything can go wrong, then it will at the worst possible moment.
    • Head directly for Altair Six. Sailor's luck, Mister Spock. Or, as one of Finagle's Laws puts it, 'Any home port the ship makes ill be somebody else's, not mine'.1967, Theodore Sturgeon, “Amok Time”, in Star Trek, season 2, episode 1 (television production), spoken by Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner)

Synonyms of Finagle's law

Questions about Finagle's law

What does Finagle's law mean?
Finagle's law means an adage which states that if anything can go wrong, then it will at the worst possible moment.
What part of speech is Finagle's law?
Finagle's law is a proper noun.

Words near Finagle's law in the dictionary

  1. fin.
  2. fina
  3. finable
  4. Finaghy
  5. finagle
  6. Finagle's law
  7. finagled
  8. finagler
  9. finaglers
  10. finagles
  11. finagling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Finagle'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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