Grimm's law: Meaning and Definition of

Grimm's' law'

Pronunciation: [key]
— Ling. Ling.
  1. the statement of the regular pattern of consonant correspondences presumed to represent changes from Proto-Indo-European to Germanic, according to which voiced aspirated stops became voiced obstruents, voiced unaspirated stops became unvoiced stops, and unvoiced stops became unvoiced fricatives: first formulated in 1820–22 by Jakob Grimm, though the facts had been noted earlier by Rasmus Rask.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.