job backwards
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English
[edit]Verb
[edit]job backwards (third-person singular simple present jobs backwards, present participle jobbing backwards, simple past and past participle jobbed backwards)
- (intransitive, chiefly finance) To reassess one's original decisions (e.g. investments) with hindsight, determining how they might have been better chosen.
- 1941, The Economist, volume 140, page 46:
- They maintain that Sir William has "jobbed backwards"; that people who invested in the mines were indulging in a speculation, and that because the speculation has failed the whole matter has been considered by Sir William as if it concerned […]
- 1969, Ian Charles Rayner Byatt, Adrian Victor Cohen, An attempt to quantify the economic benefits of scientific research:
- […] it would seem necessary to undertake a series of ex post studies, selecting present major science-based industries and jobbing backwards so as to relate their present value to the network of scientific discoveries judged essential to them.