Wordxplr

The meaning and origin of interesting English phrases

It's anyone's guess

Meaning

No one knows the answer to a question, and any attempt to predict it is purely speculative.

Origin

Picture a moment when a question hangs heavy in the air, its answer shrouded in mystery, defying even the wisest minds. The word 'guess' itself, with roots in Old Norse 'giska,' has long captured the human act of making a judgment without full knowledge. But when that uncertainty becomes universal, when every individual's attempt to predict the future is equally baseless, the phrase 'it's anyone's guess' truly shines. Emerging in the late 19th or early 20th century, this idiom became the perfect linguistic shrug, a collective admission that some questions simply have no definitive answer, leaving us all adrift in a sea of speculation, where one person's hunch is just as valid—or invalid—as the next.

Examples

  • Will the new project be successful? It's anyone's guess at this point.
  • How long the traffic jam will last is anyone's guess, so we might be here a while.
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