what-ifadj.n.
(That involves) speculation as to what might have been, had antecedent conditions been different; an instance of this.
ΘΠ
the mind > mental capacity > belief > speculation > [noun] > retrospective
what-if1973
the mind > mental capacity > belief > speculation > [adjective] > retrospective
what-if1973
the mind > mental capacity > belief > speculation > [noun] > retrospective > instance of
what-if1973
1973 Nation Rev. (Melbourne) 31 Aug. 1455/1 The whatif game, a futile exercise in hindsight, poses such unanswerable questions as whatif Romulus and Remus had fallen foul of a hostile..wolf?
1974 J. Irving 158-Pound Marriage iii. 58 Joseph Stalin..was himself a figure surrounded by a horde of what if's.
1977 New Yorker 29 Aug. 66/2 ‘The Eagle Has Landed’, one of the current unalarming terror films about what-if, the what-if being, in this case, what if the Germans had tried to capture Churchill?
1982 Times 14 Jan. (Information Technology Suppl.) p. v/4 What-If Games. Computer software is available which allows users to change one variable in a set of data, and see how this affects all the other variables.
1984 Computers in Teaching No. 1. 29 All of the models are theoretically realistic and allow the undergraduate student to pose the ‘What if..?’ kinds of question, which are so difficult to answer without recourse to simulation.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1986; most recently modified version published online September 2018).
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adj.n.1973