zipfhttp://www.oed.com/dictionary/zipf_n%3Ftab%3Dmeaning_and_useZipf, n.
Revised 2021

Zipfnoun

  1. 1.
    1936–
    Zipf's law noun
    Any of several principles proposed or popularized by George Zipf, or based on his work, spec.: (a) the observation that the length of words or expressions is generally in inverse relationship to their frequency of occurrence, more frequently used words being typically shorter; (b) (also Zipf law) a statistical model according to which, in a collection of linguistic utterances, the frequency of a word is (approximately) inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency table (the second most common word being half as frequent as the most common, the third most common being a third as frequent, and so on); (also) a generalized application of this model to rank versus frequency distribution in other contexts.
    1. 1936
      The application of Zipf's law to verbal behavior is considerably restricted.
      B. F. Skinner in Journal of Psychology vol. 2 85
    2. 1967
      He [sc. Zipf] came to the conclusion that the length of a word tends to decrease as its relative frequency of use increases... The formula..has come to be known as ‘Zipf's Law’, often quoted if also sometimes questioned.
      M. Schlauch, Language vii. 143
    3. 1971
      Zipf's law predicts an inverse ratio in the rank order distribution of varieties such that a minimal number of varieties covers a maximal number of responses and a maximal number of varieties covers a minimal number of responses.
      Journal of General Psychology October 297
    4. 2003
      Zipf's law says that..cities generally seem to obey a curious mathematical law with respect to their sizes: a country's largest city is approximately twice as large as the second-largest city, three times as big as the third city..[etc.]. The Russian cities deviate from Zipf's law in a way not seen for any other country.
      F. Hill & C. Gaddy, Siberian Curse ii. 19
    5. 2016
      A ‘Zipf's law’ is a power law with an exponent of 1.
      Journal Econ. Perspectives vol. 30 187
  2. 2.
    1953–
    As a modifier. Designating statistical concepts based on versions or applications of Zipf's law, as in Zipf curve, Zipf distribution, Zipf relation, etc.
    1. 1953
      A description of the peculiarities of the distribution of towns by size, 1951, with discussion of economic factors and applications of the Zipf analysis.
      Population Index vol. 19 275/1
    2. 1961
      There are theoretical reasons..for regarding the Zipf distribution as an approximation to a more general distribution which Simon has christened the Yule distribution.
      Journal Royal Statistical Society. A. vol. 124 6
    3. 1995
      The Zipf curve, as refined by B. Mandelbrot, indicates that the relationship between size and frequency is a constant.
      Computers & Humanities vol. 29 328/2
    4. 1995
      The researchers..grouped pairs of nucleotides to create words between three and eight base pairs long... In every case, they found that noncoding regions followed the Zipf relation more closely than did coding regions.
      Scientific American March 12/3
    5. 2005
      To put it crudely, there are a small number of words that appear very frequently: the, of, to, and, a, in, etc. After that, there is a steep decline, followed by tens of thousands of words that appear relatively rarely: palimpsest, lapidary, rodomontade, epalpebrate, and so on. When you graph what is now often called the Zipf distribution, these rare words form the long tail that tapers off to the right.
      Guardian 24 March (Life section) 24/2

Zipf, n. was revised in March 2021.

Zipf, n. was last modified in December 2024.