Idiom
twenty-twenty hindsight
Meaning
A perfect understanding of events only after they have happened.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“It's easy to have twenty-twenty hindsight.”
“With twenty-twenty hindsight, I see that quitting my job was a mistake.”
“The historian, armed with twenty-twenty hindsight, judged the general's decision harshly, forgetting the chaos and uncertainty of that winter morning.”
Examples
simple
“It's easy to have twenty-twenty hindsight.”
contextual
“With twenty-twenty hindsight, I see that quitting my job was a mistake.”
complex
“The historian, armed with twenty-twenty hindsight, judged the general's decision harshly, forgetting the chaos and uncertainty of that winter morning.”
Origin
Derived from 20/20, a notation used in visual testing to denote normal visual acuity. The term refers to the ability to see at twenty feet what a standard eye should see at that distance, applied here to the clarity of one's perception regarding past events.
Key words
Related idioms
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