Word.ws English Dictionary

Parkinson's law

Parkinson's law proper noun: the adage that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Proper noun

Parkinson's law

  1. The adage that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Origin of Parkinson's law

Introduced by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955.

Questions about Parkinson's law

What does Parkinson's law mean?
Parkinson's law means the adage that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
What part of speech is Parkinson's law?
Parkinson's law is a proper noun.

Words near Parkinson's law in the dictionary

  1. parkings
  2. parkins
  3. Parkinson
  4. Parkinson's
  5. Parkinson's disease
  6. Parkinson's law
  7. Parkinson's mask
  8. Parkinson's masks
  9. Parkinson's syndrome
  10. Parkinson-plus syndrome
  11. Parkinson-plus syndromes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Parkinson'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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