Word.ws English Dictionary

ifs and ans

ifs and ans noun: hypotheticals; counterfactuals; things that one only wishes were the case.

Noun

ifs and ans pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) hypotheticals; counterfactuals; things that one only wishes were the case
    • Away with these ifs and ans, Hans, and these et caeteraes, by mine honor Rowland Lacy none but the king shall wrong thee: […]c. 1599, Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker's Holiday
    • "Oh!" quoth the Emperor, "Oh, excellent oats! . . . you feed your horses upon ifs and ans. The man that invented ifs and ans certainly made gold of chopped straw! […]1865, The Musical World, page 46

Origin of ifs and ans

From the old rhyme "if 'ifs' and 'ans' were pots and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers" (and variations). Compare if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. See an in archaic sense meaning "if".

Questions about ifs and ans

What does ifs and ans mean?
Ifs and ans means hypotheticals; counterfactuals; things that one only wishes were the case.
What part of speech is ifs and ans?
Ifs and ans is a noun.

Words near ifs and ans in the dictionary

  1. ifritahs
  2. ifritas
  3. ifrits
  4. IFRS
  5. ifs
  6. ifs and ans
  7. ifs and buts
  8. ifs or buts
  9. ifs, ands or buts
  10. ifs, ands, or buts
  11. IFSC

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ifs and ans (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “ifs and ans.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ifs_and_ans. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.