Word.ws English Dictionary

staircase wit

staircase wit noun: the thinking of an idea or course of action too late to use it effectively, or the tendency to do so.

Noun

staircase wit (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic, rare) The thinking of an idea or course of action too late to use it effectively, or the tendency to do so.
    • When I have completed a manuscript, if I lay it away in a drawer or pigeon-hole, it lies there quietly enough, and my mind seems wholly discharged of it. But if I mail it, I straightaway find myself tormented with "staircase wit" in the shape of emendations.1887 Jan–Jun, “The Contributors' Club”, in The Atlantic Monthly, volume 59, Atlantic Monthly Co., page 140
    • So-called Staircase Wit is another example, where we key ourselves up for an important event—an interview, say, or a date—rehearsing how we are going to present ourselves and what we are going to say. Then afterwards we lie awake thinking of all the witty, intelligent, charming things we should...1981, Guy Claxton, Wholly Human: Western and Eastern Visions of the Self and Its Perfection, Routledge, page 31
    Synonyms:
    afterwit, l'esprit de l'escalier, (neologism) retrotort

Examples of staircase wit in a sentence

  • So-called Staircase Wit is another example, where we key ourselves up for an important event—an interview, say, or a date—rehearsing how we are going to present ourselves and what we are going to say.1981, Guy Claxton, Wholly Human: Western and Eastern Visions of the Self and Its Perfection, Routledge, page 31:
  • The next day I experienced staircase wit.2008, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Random House, page 131:

Synonyms of staircase wit

Origin of staircase wit

Calque of French esprit de l'escalier.

Questions about staircase wit

What does staircase wit mean?
Staircase wit means the thinking of an idea or course of action too late to use it effectively, or the tendency to do so.
How do you use staircase wit in a sentence?
So-called Staircase Wit is another example, where we key ourselves up for an important event—an interview, say, or a date—rehearsing how we are going to present ourselves and what we are going to say.
What part of speech is staircase wit?
Staircase wit is a noun.

Words near staircase wit in the dictionary

  1. stairbuilders
  2. stairbuilding
  3. staircase
  4. staircase lock
  5. staircase locks
  6. staircase wit
  7. staircased
  8. staircaselike
  9. staircases
  10. staircasing
  11. stairchair

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: staircase wit (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-staircase wit.ogg.

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