Retrospectoscope

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A hypothetical instrument that allows diagnostic and management decisions to be made with medical hindsight. humorous, slang

    "A distinguished private foundation, that shall be nameless, offered me a small grant if l would test out their crystal ball with its two new attachments; one of them called the retrospectoscope and the other called the prognosticator."

Synonyms

All synonyms
prospectoscoperetrospectroscope

Example

More examples

"A distinguished private foundation, that shall be nameless, offered me a small grant if l would test out their crystal ball with its two new attachments; one of them called the retrospectoscope and the other called the prognosticator."

Etymology

From retrospect(ive) + -o- + -scope.

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