Meanings
plural Schrödinger's douchebags
- CanadaUSderogatoryidiomaticslangvulgarA person who makes offensive or inflammatory remarks and characterizes these statements as either sincere or joking based on the reactions of others.
Schrodinger's douchebag refers to someone who tests what they say before taking responsibility for what they've said.
2019 August 14, Gyles Brandreth, Have You Eaten Grandma?: Or, the Life-Saving Importance of Correct Punctuation, Grammar, and Good English, →ISBN, retrieved 24 Sep 2023, page 2182 more examples
"Schrödinger’s douchebag" [i]s someone who makes an unacceptable remark and then waits to see the reaction before declaring retrospectively whether they meant it for real or were "just joking".
2016 August 27, Mark Thompson, “From Trump to Brexit rhetoric: how today's politicians have got away with words”, in The Guardian, retrieved 24 Sep 2023Vivek Ramaswamy is an American politician capturing conservative and immigrant hearts but stuck in a high school persona: a Schrodinger's douchebag.
2023 September 18, Neil Mahto, “Vivek Ramaswamy has no platform”, in The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, retrieved 24 Sep 2023
Origin
By analogy with Schrödinger's cat.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
Schrödinger's douchebag. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Schr%C3%B6dinger's%20douchebag
“Schrödinger's douchebag.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Schr%C3%B6dinger's%20douchebag. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Schrödinger's douchebag,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Schr%C3%B6dinger's%20douchebag.
Source: Schrödinger's douchebag on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.