Seat-of-the-pants

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Done by feel, guess, or trial and error rather than by careful planning, thought or technique. US, idiomatic, not-comparable

    "The new pension-fund managers are an eclectic group, displaying a spectrum of styles and strategies. Some rely chiefly on computers and charts, while others are more likely to trust their seat-of-the-pants judgment."

Example

More examples

"The new pension-fund managers are an eclectic group, displaying a spectrum of styles and strategies. Some rely chiefly on computers and charts, while others are more likely to trust their seat-of-the-pants judgment."

Etymology

From seat + of + the + pants.

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