See second-system effect in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "Introduced by Fred Brooks in his book The Mythical Man-Month (1975).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "second-system effects",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "second-system effect (plural second-system effects)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
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"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
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}
],
"glosses": [
"The tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems to be succeeded by overengineered, bloated systems, due to inflated expectations and overconfidence."
],
"id": "en-second-system_effect-en-noun-GTdtMX-H",
"links": [
[
"small",
"small"
],
[
"elegant",
"elegant"
],
[
"successful",
"successful"
],
[
"succeed",
"succeed"
],
[
"overengineered",
"overengineered"
],
[
"bloated",
"bloated"
],
[
"expectation",
"expectation"
],
[
"overconfidence",
"overconfidence"
]
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "second-system syndrome"
}
]
}
],
"word": "second-system effect"
}
{
"etymology_text": "Introduced by Fred Brooks in his book The Mythical Man-Month (1975).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "second-system effects",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "second-system effect (plural second-system effects)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
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"Pages with 1 entry",
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],
"glosses": [
"The tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems to be succeeded by overengineered, bloated systems, due to inflated expectations and overconfidence."
],
"links": [
[
"small",
"small"
],
[
"elegant",
"elegant"
],
[
"successful",
"successful"
],
[
"succeed",
"succeed"
],
[
"overengineered",
"overengineered"
],
[
"bloated",
"bloated"
],
[
"expectation",
"expectation"
],
[
"overconfidence",
"overconfidence"
]
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "second-system syndrome"
}
]
}
],
"word": "second-system effect"
}
Download raw JSONL data for second-system effect meaning in English (1.0kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-01-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-01-01 using wiktextract (96027d6 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.