Word.ws English Dictionary

Stein's law

Stein's law proper noun: a certain principle or any of several aphorisms expressing it: If something cannot go on forever, it will eventually stop.

Proper noun

Stein's law

  1. A certain principle or any of several aphorisms expressing it: If something cannot go on forever, it will eventually stop.
    • Leaving aside the point that what goes up must come down, Stein's law says that if infinite height is not possible then the rising will eventually stop.

Origin of Stein's law

Formulated by Herbert Stein in the 1980s.

Questions about Stein's law

What does Stein's law mean?
Stein's law means a certain principle or any of several aphorisms expressing it: If something cannot go on forever, it will eventually stop.
What part of speech is Stein's law?
Stein's law is a proper noun.

Words near Stein's law in the dictionary

  1. Steimels
  2. Steimle
  3. Steimles
  4. stein
  5. Stein's example
  6. Stein's law
  7. Stein's lemma
  8. Stein's paradox
  9. Stein's phenomenon
  10. Stein-Levanthal syndrome
  11. Stein-Leventhal syndrome

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Stein'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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