anyone's guess
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Completely uncertain or unpredictable
Literally: the guess of any person
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Thankfully, we've now got Brett, Polly and Loz (and Nicky and Rickey too, I guess, though what the hell something like ‘ we blur into images of state coercion’ means is anyone's guess).
Williams wrote (1990) 140 NLJ 1227: What the Victorian draftsman intended by " actual " is anyone's guess.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “anyone's guess” mean?
Completely uncertain or unpredictable Literally: the guess of any person
Is “anyone's guess” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.