Mark from Richland Center, Wisconsin, wonders about the origin of the expression Murphy’s Law, which is often rendered as Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. The concept has been around for years, but researchers Fred Shapiro, Stephen Goranson, and Bill Mullins of the American Dialect Society have disproved all the common stories about the origin of the term itself. An interview with mathematician and physicist Howard Percy “Bob” Robertson suggests that the name may have originated with a joking reference to Newton’s Laws of Thermodynamics. One variant on Murphy’s Law proposed in 1992 by an Australian editor reads in part, “If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.” It’s called Muphry’s Law. This is part of a complete episode.
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...
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