📚 phrase • entry_id 58663
woulda, coulda, shoulda
Meanings (ES + gloss)
otro gallo cantaría
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.'"
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.
Rahlves described the team's overall skiing performance here as, "woulda, shoulda, coulda—all that stuff. It sucks—we definitely came up very short."
Phrases
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