Word.ws English Dictionary

Menzerath's law

Menzerath's law proper noun: a rule according to which the increase of a linguistic construct results in a decrease of its constituents, and vice versa: for example, the more clauses appear in a sentence, the shorter those clauses are.

Proper noun

Menzerath's law

  1. A rule according to which the increase of a linguistic construct results in a decrease of its constituents, and vice versa: for example, the more clauses appear in a sentence, the shorter those clauses are.

Origin of Menzerath's law

Named after Paul Menzerath.

Questions about Menzerath's law

What does Menzerath's law mean?
Menzerath's law means a rule according to which the increase of a linguistic construct results in a decrease of its constituents, and vice versa: for example, the more clauses appear in a sentence, the shorter those clauses are.
What part of speech is Menzerath's law?
Menzerath's law is a proper noun.

Words near Menzerath's law in the dictionary

  1. menz
  2. Menzel
  3. Menzel Bourguiba
  4. Menzels
  5. Menzer
  6. Menzerath's law
  7. Menzers
  8. Menzes
  9. Menzi
  10. Menzian
  11. Menziatic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Menzerath'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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Menzerath's law.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/menzerath%27s_law. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.