See woulda, coulda, shoulda on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "Derisively mimicks the frequent perfect conditional forms (I would have done this and that) which are used when talking about what might have happened in the past.",
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"expansion": "woulda, coulda, shoulda",
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"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "phrase",
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"source": "w"
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},
{
"kind": "other",
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}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1995 November 17, A. M. Rosenthal, “The Great Botch-Up”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-06-16:",
"text": "President Clinton . . . had his clear shot at health-care reform, if we need it, he and his wife, but they blew it. As Mrs. Clinton might say, woulda coulda shoulda.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2006 February 21, Mike Rowbottom, “Retirement talk works wonders for Dorfmeister”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 2015-06-16:",
"text": "Rahlves described the team's overall skiing performance here as, \"woulda, shoulda, coulda—all that stuff. It sucks—we definitely came up very short.\"",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2008 July 7, David Van Biema, Tim McGirk, “Was Jesus' Resurrection a Sequel?”, in Time, retrieved 2015-06-16:",
"text": "[S]uch a contentious reading of the 87-line tablet depends on creative interpretation of a smudged passage, making it the latest entry in the woulda/coulda/shoulda category of possible New Testament artifacts.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2014 December 18, Doug Smith, “Three things to ponder from easy Raptors win”, in Toronto Star, Canada, retrieved 2015-06-18:",
"text": "[H]e was talking about last night’s game and what it would have meant to have this roster last spring. . . .\n“Shoulda, coulda, woulda” he started. “If ifs and buts were candies and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas, right?”",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"An expression of dismissiveness or disappointment concerning a statement, question, explanation, course of action, or occurrence involving hypothetical possibilities, uncertain facts, or missed opportunities.'New York Times, May 15, 1994): \"The order of words in this delicious morsel of dialect varies with the user. . . . In this rhyming compound, a triple elision does the hat trick: although each elision expresses something different, when taken together, the trio conveys a unified meaning. Shoulda, short for should have (and not should of, which lexies call a variant but I call a mistake), carries a sense of correctness or obligation; coulda implies a possibility, and woulda denotes conditional certainty, an oxymoron: the stated intent to have taken an action if only something had not intervened. . . . Taken together, the term means 'Spare me the useless excuses.'\""
],
"id": "en-woulda,_coulda,_shoulda-en-phrase-mXhuPz0b",
"links": [
[
"dismissiveness",
"dismissiveness#English"
],
[
"disappointment",
"disappointment#English"
],
[
"hypothetical",
"hypothetical#English"
],
[
"possibilities",
"possibility#English"
],
[
"uncertain",
"uncertain#English"
],
[
"fact",
"fact#English"
],
[
"missed",
"missed#English"
],
[
"opportunities",
"opportunity#English"
]
],
"related": [
{
"word": "could have, would have, should have"
},
{
"word": "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"
},
{
"word": "too little, too late"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "shoulda, coulda, woulda"
},
{
"word": "shoulda, woulda, coulda"
},
{
"word": "woulda, shoulda, coulda"
},
{
"word": "coulda, shoulda, woulda"
},
{
"word": "coulda, woulda, shoulda"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "nl",
"lang": "Dutch",
"sense": "expression of dismissiveness",
"word": "as is verbrande turf"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "expression of dismissiveness",
"word": "yavéka (il n’y avait qu’à)"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "expression of dismissiveness",
"word": "yfalé (il fallait)"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "expression of dismissiveness",
"word": "hätte, hätte, Fahrradkette"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "expression of dismissiveness",
"word": "otro gallo cantaría"
}
]
}
],
"word": "woulda, coulda, shoulda"
}
{
"etymology_text": "Derisively mimicks the frequent perfect conditional forms (I would have done this and that) which are used when talking about what might have happened in the past.",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "phrase"
},
"expansion": "woulda, coulda, shoulda",
"name": "head"
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],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "phrase",
"related": [
{
"word": "could have, would have, should have"
},
{
"word": "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"
},
{
"word": "too little, too late"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
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"English terms with quotations",
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"Pages with entries",
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"Terms with French translations",
"Terms with German translations",
"Terms with Spanish translations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1995 November 17, A. M. Rosenthal, “The Great Botch-Up”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-06-16:",
"text": "President Clinton . . . had his clear shot at health-care reform, if we need it, he and his wife, but they blew it. As Mrs. Clinton might say, woulda coulda shoulda.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2006 February 21, Mike Rowbottom, “Retirement talk works wonders for Dorfmeister”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 2015-06-16:",
"text": "Rahlves described the team's overall skiing performance here as, \"woulda, shoulda, coulda—all that stuff. It sucks—we definitely came up very short.\"",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2008 July 7, David Van Biema, Tim McGirk, “Was Jesus' Resurrection a Sequel?”, in Time, retrieved 2015-06-16:",
"text": "[S]uch a contentious reading of the 87-line tablet depends on creative interpretation of a smudged passage, making it the latest entry in the woulda/coulda/shoulda category of possible New Testament artifacts.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2014 December 18, Doug Smith, “Three things to ponder from easy Raptors win”, in Toronto Star, Canada, retrieved 2015-06-18:",
"text": "[H]e was talking about last night’s game and what it would have meant to have this roster last spring. . . .\n“Shoulda, coulda, woulda” he started. “If ifs and buts were candies and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas, right?”",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"An expression of dismissiveness or disappointment concerning a statement, question, explanation, course of action, or occurrence involving hypothetical possibilities, uncertain facts, or missed opportunities.'New York Times, May 15, 1994): \"The order of words in this delicious morsel of dialect varies with the user. . . . In this rhyming compound, a triple elision does the hat trick: although each elision expresses something different, when taken together, the trio conveys a unified meaning. Shoulda, short for should have (and not should of, which lexies call a variant but I call a mistake), carries a sense of correctness or obligation; coulda implies a possibility, and woulda denotes conditional certainty, an oxymoron: the stated intent to have taken an action if only something had not intervened. . . . Taken together, the term means 'Spare me the useless excuses.'\""
],
"links": [
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"dismissiveness",
"dismissiveness#English"
],
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"disappointment",
"disappointment#English"
],
[
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],
[
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"possibility#English"
],
[
"uncertain",
"uncertain#English"
],
[
"fact",
"fact#English"
],
[
"missed",
"missed#English"
],
[
"opportunities",
"opportunity#English"
]
]
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "shoulda, coulda, woulda"
},
{
"word": "shoulda, woulda, coulda"
},
{
"word": "woulda, shoulda, coulda"
},
{
"word": "coulda, shoulda, woulda"
},
{
"word": "coulda, woulda, shoulda"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "nl",
"lang": "Dutch",
"sense": "expression of dismissiveness",
"word": "as is verbrande turf"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "expression of dismissiveness",
"word": "yavéka (il n’y avait qu’à)"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "expression of dismissiveness",
"word": "yfalé (il fallait)"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "expression of dismissiveness",
"word": "hätte, hätte, Fahrradkette"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "expression of dismissiveness",
"word": "otro gallo cantaría"
}
],
"word": "woulda, coulda, shoulda"
}
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
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