Word.ws English Dictionary

Hanlon's razor

Hanlon's razor proper noun: the adage stating "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.".

Proper noun

Hanlon's razor

  1. The adage stating "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
    • McCord may have bungled the taping of the internal doors, all right, but remember Hanlon's Razor, which is a maxim that states: "Never blame on malice that which can be fully explained by stupidity."1980 October, G. Gordon Liddy, quotee, “Playboy Interview: G. Gordon Liddy”, in Playboy, volume 27, number 10, Chicago, →ISSN, page 211
    • But at many other times, journalists come up with overly convoluted explanations for Trump's behavior ("this seemingly self-destructive emotional outburst is actually a clever political strategy!") when simpler ones will suffice ("this is a self-destructive emotional outburst."). In doing so, they...2017 September 30, Nate Silver, “The Media Needs To Stop Rationalizing President Trump's Behavior”, in FiveThirtyEight, archived from the original on 30 Sep 2017

Origin of Hanlon's razor

Named by analogy with Occam's razor after Robert J. Hanlon of Scranton, Pennsylvania, who was credited for the adage he submitted to a compilation of various jokes related to Murphy’s law published in Arthur Bloch’s Murphy’s Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong! (1980); however, a similar quotation appears in Robert A. Heinlein’s “Logic of Empire” (1941), “You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity”, wherein it is described as the “devil theory” of sociology.

Questions about Hanlon's razor

What does Hanlon's razor mean?
Hanlon's razor means the adage stating "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.".
What part of speech is Hanlon's razor?
Hanlon's razor is a proper noun.

Words near Hanlon's razor in the dictionary

  1. Hanley Hills
  2. Hanleys
  3. Hanlin
  4. Hanlins
  5. Hanlon
  6. Hanlon's razor
  7. Hanlons
  8. Hanly
  9. Hanlys
  10. Hanmer
  11. hanmun

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Hanlon's razor (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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Cite this entry: “Hanlon's razor.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hanlon%27s_razor. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.