lindy effect
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.84 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
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.
Example Sentences
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.
Inflected Forms
the Lindy effect (canonical)