# Zipf's law · Concept

> In natural text, a word's frequency falls off in proportion to its rank.

Source: https://mysteriesdept.com/concepts/CPT0DECVZZZVP1M/zipfs-law  
Publisher: Mysteries Department  
Licence: CC BY 4.0 (credit Mysteries Department and link the page)  

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[Concepts](https://mysteriesdept.com/concepts)Zipf's law

Concept · linguistics

# Zipf's law

In natural text, a word's frequency falls off in proportion to its rank.

In a long text, the most common word appears about twice as often as the second, three times as often as the third, and so on. Natural languages follow it closely; so, it turns out, do many artificial texts, so a Zipfian curve is weak evidence that a text is language and a non-Zipfian one is stronger evidence that it isn't. The site's unread scripts are tested against it as a first filter, not a proof.

## Cite it

```
Mysteries Department. (2026). Zipf's law [Concept CPT0DECVZZZVP1M]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/CPT0DECVZZZVP1M
```

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**CPT** 0DECVZZZVP1M

Record

Concept

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Linguistics

Related

[Frequency analysis](https://mysteriesdept.com/concepts/CPT0DECVZZJW77N/frequency-analysis) · [Entropy](https://mysteriesdept.com/concepts/CPT0DECVZZSAC8F/entropy)

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Related concepts

[Frequency analysis](https://mysteriesdept.com/concepts/CPT0DECVZZJW77N/frequency-analysis)[Entropy](https://mysteriesdept.com/concepts/CPT0DECVZZSAC8F/entropy)

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