ifs and ans
Noun
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Noun
- hypotheticals; counterfactuals; things that one only wishes were the case
- c. 1599, Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker's Holiday
- Away with these ifs and ans, Hans, and these et caeteraes, by mine honor Rowland Lacy none but the king shall wrong thee: […]
- 1865, The Musical World (page 46)
- "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! […]
- 1912, Percy Adolphus Vaile, The Soul of Golf
- And yet such is the constitution of the human golfing soul that it not only fails to achieve it, but invents for itself multiform and manifold ifs and ans for not achieving it— […]
- c. 1599, Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker's Holiday
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003