Sod's law
British culture axiom / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Sod's law, a British culture axiom, states that "if something can go wrong, it will". The law sometimes has a corollary: that the misfortune will happen at "the worst possible time" (Finagle's law). The term is commonly used in the United Kingdom (while in many parts of North America the phrase "Murphy's law" is more popular).[1]
The phrase seems to derive, at least in part, from the colloquialism an "unlucky sod"; a term for someone who has had some bad (unlucky) experience, and is usually used as a sympathetic reference to the person.[2]
A slightly different form of Sod's law states that "the degree of failure is in direct proportion to the effort expended and to the need for success."[3]
An alternative expression, again in British culture, is "hope for the best, expect the worst".[4]