Word.ws English Dictionary

Hofstadter's law

Hofstadter's law proper noun: the self-referential adage that a task always takes longer than expected, even when Hofstadter's law is taken into account.

Proper noun

Hofstadter's law

  1. The self-referential adage that a task always takes longer than expected, even when Hofstadter's law is taken into account.

Origin of Hofstadter's law

Named after Douglas Hofstadter (1945–), who introduced it in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

Questions about Hofstadter's law

What does Hofstadter's law mean?
Hofstadter's law means the self-referential adage that a task always takes longer than expected, even when Hofstadter's law is taken into account.
What part of speech is Hofstadter's law?
Hofstadter's law is a proper noun.

Words near Hofstadter's law in the dictionary

  1. Hofschild
  2. Hofschneider
  3. Hofstadter
  4. Hofstadter butterfly
  5. Hofstadter's butterfly
  6. Hofstadter's law
  7. Hofstadterian
  8. Hofstedean
  9. hofsteniid
  10. Hofstetter
  11. Hofstetters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Hofstadter'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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