Coulds

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Hypothetical possibilities or alternative outcomes that might have happened or might still happen, often considered in a worrying or regretful way
2. The imagined options or what-might-have-beens that people dwell on when weighing choices they did not make
3. Speculative alternatives or possible scenarios, especially those that cause doubt, regret or endless second-guessing

Etymology: "Coulds" is the plural of "could," a noun meaning worrying hypothetical alternatives, as in the "shoulds and coulds" of second-guessing. The modern noun is a grammatical flip: a modal auxiliary has been turned into a thing to be counted. The auxiliary itself has an older, plainer meaning. It descends from Old English "cūþe," the past form of "cunnan," meaning "to be able," which is also the root of "can." Its spelling picked up an "l" only in the early 16th century, copied from "should" and "would," even though the "l" was never pronounced in "could" in the same way. That spelling change is why the word looks so unlike its ancestor.