Just thought it might be worth posting this. An old client of mine emailed me this question and here’s what I thought.
QUESTION
If someone says “Couldn’t have gone much better” what does that mean?
Is it , “it was great”?
I understand “Couldn’t be better” but the sentence above is using the third conditional.
MY ANSWER
“Couldn’t have gone much better” means that of all the expectations you had of a particular event, it was the almost the best expectation that happened.
For eg. if you were taking an exam and you had a range of expectations, perhaps scores of 45% 55% 65% 75% 85% and after taking the exam and getting your score back you got 83%, you could say “Couldn’t have gone much better”
We also say this after interviews etc., if the interview went well and in response to the question “How did it go?”
