Word.ws English Dictionary

second guess

second guess is the alternative form of second-guess.

Meaning of second-guess

Verb

second-guess (third-person singular simple present second-guesses, present participle second-guessing, simple past and past participle second-guessed)

  1. (transitive) To vet or evaluate; to criticize or correct, often by hindsight, by presuming to have a better idea, method, etc.
    • Please don't try to second-guess the procedure that we have already refined and adopted.
  2. (intransitive, transitive) To anticipate or predict someone's actions or thoughts by guesswork.
    • In this day and age, it's so easy to stress / 'Cause people are strange and you can never second-guess2000, Paul Godfrey, Ross Godfrey, Skye Edwards, “Rome Wasn't Built In a Day”, in Fragments of Freedom, performed by Morcheeba

Forms of second guess

third-person singular presentsecond guesses
present participlesecond guessing
past participlesecond guessed
pastsecond guessed

Words formed from second guess

Questions about second guess

What is second guess the alternative form of?
Second guess is the alternative form of second-guess.

Words near second guess in the dictionary

  1. second grade
  2. second grader
  3. second graders
  4. second grades
  5. Second Great Awakening
  6. second guess
  7. second guessed
  8. second guesser
  9. second guessers
  10. second guesses
  11. second guessing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: second guess (page history and authors); second-guess (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.

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Cite this entry: “second guess.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/second_guess. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.