Word.ws English Dictionary

Zawinski's law

Zawinski's law proper noun: the wry observation that "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.".

Proper noun

Zawinski's law

  1. The wry observation that "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

Origin of Zawinski's law

Attributed to American computer programmer Jamie Zawinski.

Questions about Zawinski's law

What does Zawinski's law mean?
Zawinski's law means the wry observation that "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.".
What part of speech is Zawinski's law?
Zawinski's law is a proper noun.

Words near Zawinski's law in the dictionary

  1. Zawadzkis
  2. zawg
  3. zawgs
  4. Zawgyi
  5. Zawiercie
  6. Zawinski's law
  7. Zawislak
  8. Zawislaks
  9. Zawistowski
  10. Zawistowskis
  11. zawiya

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Zawinski'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: “Zawinski's law.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/zawinski%27s_law. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.