what-iffery

noun

Speculation as to what might have happened if things had happened differently.

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Meanings

nounwhat-iffery (uncountable)
  1. informaluncountableSpeculation as to what might have happened if things had happened differently.

    […] what if Jonah is a piece of what-iffery, a story, an experiment with words, rather than a carefully honed piece of polemic […]

    2000, Yvonne Sherwood, A biblical text and its afterlives, page 209
    2 more examples

    The film's what-iffery becomes even more compelling when Blair, played, as in A Very Social Secretary, by a twitchingly reptilian Robert Lindsay, decides to stand down shortly before the 2010 general election.

    2007 January 9, Stuart Jeffries, “A prime minister in the dock”, in The Guardian

    My name is Greg Jenner, and I'm pathologically sceptical towards historical what-iffery. Let me clarify—there's nothing wrong with asking, ‘What if this hadn't happened?’

    2021, Greg Jenner, Ask A Historian: 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know, Hachette, →ISBN

Origin

From what-if + -ery.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

what-iffery. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/what-iffery

MLA

“what-iffery.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/what-iffery. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “what-iffery,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/what-iffery.

Source: what-iffery on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.