English Explanatory Dictionary

Lindy effect

English dictionary entry

Meanings

name
  1. The hypothesized phenomenon that the future life expectancy of certain nonperishable things (such as a technology or an idea) is proportional to their current age, so that every additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life expectancy.

Word forms

Lindy effect the Lindy effect

Etymology

In reference to Lindy's delicatessen in New York, where comedians would meet to discuss showbusiness. This was discussed in "Lindy's Law", a 1964 article by Albert Goldman in The New Republic. Goldman described a folkloric belief that the amount of material comedians have is constant, and therefore the frequency of output predicts how long their series will last.

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on L Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary