Word.ws English Dictionary

what-if

what-if noun: a speculation as to what might have happened if something else had happened earlier.

Noun

what-if (plural what-ifs)

  1. (informal) A speculation as to what might have happened if something else had happened earlier.
    • Each man was running over the what ifs in his mind.2005, Paul Carter, Don't Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs, Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin, page 199
  2. (informal) A hypothetical case or situation, usually evoked by a sense of anxiety or uncertainty.

Verb

what-if (third-person singular simple present what-ifs, present participle what-iffing, simple past and past participle what-iffed)

  1. (informal) To speculate about the consequences of something that could have happened.

Forms of what-if

Noun
pluralwhat-ifs
Verb
third-person singular presentwhat-ifs
present participlewhat-iffing
past participlewhat-iffed
pastwhat-iffed

Words formed from what-if

Questions about what-if

What does what-if mean?
What-if means a speculation as to what might have happened if something else had happened earlier.
What part of speech is what-if?
What-if can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of what-if?
The plural of what-if is what-ifs.

Words near what-if in the dictionary

  1. what-d'ye-call-it
  2. what-d'ye-call-its
  3. what-do-you-call-it
  4. what-do-you-call-its
  5. what-have-you
  6. what-if
  7. what-iffed
  8. what-iffery
  9. what-iffing
  10. what-ifs
  11. what-it's-like-ness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: what-if (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: “what-if.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/what-if. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.