# Heaps' law

> English word · Noun

## Definitions
1. An empirical law that expresses the correlation between the length of a document or set of documents and the corresponding number of distinct words.

## Etymology
Named after Harold Stanley Heaps, but was originally discovered by Gustav Herdan.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/heaps-law