What does "might-have-been" mean?

Someone or something whose potential greatness was not achieved.

What is a synonym for "might-have-been"?

Common synonyms include: could-have-been.

Might-have-been

noun

noun ·3 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
Someone or something whose potential greatness was not achieved.
"But no more imposing might-have-been was there in Great Britain than the Glasgow & North Western Railway, which was intended to run from Glasgow to Inverness via Glencoe and the Great Glen."
2
an event that could have occurred but never did wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

could-have-been

Example

More examples

"But no more imposing might-have-been was there in Great Britain than the Glasgow & North Western Railway, which was intended to run from Glasgow to Inverness via Glencoe and the Great Glen."

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.