what-iffery

English

Etymology

what-if +‎ -ery

Noun

what-iffery (uncountable)

  1. (informal) Speculation as to what might have happened if things had happened differently.
    • 2000, Yvonne Sherwood, A biblical text and its afterlives, page 209:
      […] what if Jonah is a piece of what-iffery, a story, an experiment with words, rather than a carefully honed piece of polemic […]
    • 2007 January 9, Stuart Jeffries, “A prime minister in the dock”, in The Guardian‎:
      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.
    • 2021, Greg Jenner, Ask A Historian: 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know‎, Hachette, →ISBN:
      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?’

See also
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