< the name of George Kingsley Zipf (1902–50), U.S. linguist.
Meaning & use
1.
1936–
Zipf's lawnoun
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.
1936
The application of Zipf's law to verbal behavior is considerably restricted.
B. F. Skinner in Journal of Psychologyvol. 2 85
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
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
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
2016
A ‘Zipf's law’ is a power law with an exponent of 1.
As a modifier. Designating statistical concepts based on versions or applications of Zipf's law, as in Zipf curve, Zipf distribution, Zipf relation, etc.
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 Indexvol. 19 275/1
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
1995
The Zipf curve, as refined by B. Mandelbrot, indicates that the relationship between size and frequency is a constant.
Computers & Humanitiesvol. 29 328/2
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
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.
Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛtl/ but /ˈpɛtl̩i/.
Vowels
iːfleece
ihappy
ɪkit
ɛdress
atrap, bath
ɑːstart, palm, bath
ɒlot
ɔːthought, force
ʌstrut
ʊfoot
uːgoose
əletter
əːnurse
ɪənear
ɛːsquare
ʊəcure
eɪface
ʌɪpride
aʊmouth
əʊgoat
ɔɪvoice
ãgratin
ɒ̃salon
ᵻ(/ɪ/-/ə/)
ᵿ(/ʊ/-/ə/)
Other symbols
The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.
The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.
Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.
Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛd(ə)l/ but /ˈpɛdl̩i/.
Vowels
ifleece, happy
ɪkit
ɛdress
ætrap, bath
ɑlot, palm, cloth, thought
ɑrstart
ɔcloth, thought
ɔrnorth, force
ʊfoot
ugoose
əstrut, comma
ərnurse, letter
ɪ(ə)rnear
ɛ(ə)rsquare
ʊ(ə)rcure
eɪface
aɪpride
aʊmouth
oʊgoat
ɔɪvoice
ɑ̃gratin
æ̃salon
ᵻ(/ɪ/-/ə/)
ᵿ(/ʊ/-/ə/)
Other symbols
The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.
The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.
Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.
Simple text respell breaks words into syllables, separated by a hyphen. The syllable which carries the primary stress is written in capital letters. This key covers both British and U.S. English Simple Text Respell.
Consonants
b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w and z have their standard English values