1. To criticize or correct after an outcome is known: "One hesitates to second-guess the jury's judgment from a distance of more than sixty years"(Ira Stoll).
2. To criticize, contradict, or overrule (a decision or one who has made a decision): "When he wants to prescribe costly but powerful medicines, faraway HMO clerks second-guess his drug choices"(George Anders)."Sometimes [General Halleck] second-guessed Grant and aired his objections to instructions instead of immediately transmitting them"(Brooks D. Simpson).
3.
a. To outguess.
b. To predict or anticipate: "She can second-guess indictments"(Scott Turow).
v.intr.
To criticize a decision, especially after its outcome is known.
"It has long been settled that the judiciary generally lacks authority to second-guess those executive determinations, much less to impose its own charging preferences," wrote Srinivasan, who was under consideration earlier this year for a Supreme Court appointment.
IT AMAZES me just how many letters you get from people who waste so much time playing mind games with their partner and trying to second-guess what they think.
Tom Connolly, who represents Slatten, saidECC "the indictment is an effort by bureaucrats in Washington to second-guess split-second decisions made by honorable men during a firefight in the most dangerous neighborhood in the world."
WASHINGTON (PAN): US President Barack Obama has reiterated his pledge not to permit safe haven for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but an eminent South Asian expert said Obamas maiden speech at the UN shows he is beginning to second-guess US strategy in Afghanistan.
The new man in charge of making the London 2012 Olympics happen on time and on budget fired off a warning to critics yesterday - "don't second-guess us".
Says BalletMet artistic director Gerard Charles, "People love mysteries because they can second-guess how events have transpired." To that end, the ballet will incorporate a modicum of audience interaction to help solve the mystery of Whodunit?
But with rare exceptions people do not take medical treatment for fun--and patients cannot safely second-guess their doctor's recommendations, making their own decisions on which are necessary and which are frills.
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