chance
Americannoun
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chances
plural
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the absence of any cause of events that can be predicted, understood, or controlled: often personified or treated as a positive agency.
Chance governs all.
- Antonyms:
- necessity
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luck or fortune.
a game of chance.
-
a possibility or probability of anything happening.
a fifty-percent chance of success.
- Synonyms:
- contingency
-
an opportune or favorable time; opportunity.
Now is your chance.
- Synonyms:
- opening
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Baseball. an opportunity to field the ball and make a putout or an assist.
-
a risk or hazard.
Take a chance.
-
a share or ticket in a lottery or prize drawing.
The charity is selling chances for a dollar each.
-
chances, probability.
The chances are that the train hasn't left yet.
-
Midland and Southern U.S. a quantity or number (usually followed byof ).
a fine chance of tomatoes, harvested fresh from the garden today.
-
Archaic. an unfortunate event; mishap.
verb (used without object)
-
chances,
present (3rd person singular)
-
chanced,
past participle, past
-
chancing
present participle
verb (used with object)
-
chances,
present (3rd person singular)
-
chanced,
past participle, past
-
chancing
present participle
adjective
verb phrase
idioms
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on the off chance, in the very slight hope or against the very slight possibility.
I’m free Friday, on the off chance that you end up with a spare ticket to the concert.
-
on the chance, in the mild hope or against the possibility.
I'll wait on the chance that she'll come.
-
by chance, without plan or intent; accidentally.
I met her again by chance in a department store in Paris.
noun
-
-
the unknown and unpredictable element that causes an event to result in a certain way rather than another, spoken of as a real force
-
( as modifier )
a chance meeting
-
-
fortune; luck; fate
-
an opportunity or occasion
-
a risk; gamble
you take a chance with his driving
-
the extent to which an event is likely to occur; probability
-
an unpredicted event, esp a fortunate one
that was quite a chance, finding him here
-
archaic an unlucky event; mishap
-
-
accidentally
he slipped by chance
-
perhaps
do you by chance have a room?
-
-
it is likely (that) …
-
acting on the possibility; in case
-
the opportunity for personal gain (esp in the phrase an eye to the main chance )
verb
-
(tr) to risk; hazard
I'll chance the worst happening
-
to happen by chance; be the case by chance
I chanced to catch sight of her as she passed
-
to come upon by accident
he chanced on the solution to his problem
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to attempt to do something although the chance of success may be slight
Synonym Usage
See happen.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
chancesimple
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chancessimple
-
have chancedperfect
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has chancedperfect
-
am chancingprogressive
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are chancingprogressive
-
is chancingprogressive
-
have been chancingperfect progressive
-
has been chancingperfect progressive
Past
-
chancedsimple
-
had chancedperfect
-
was chancingprogressive
-
were chancingprogressive
-
had been chancingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of chance
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English chaunce, chance, chea(u)nce, from Old French chance, cheance from unattested Vulgar Latin cadentia “a befalling, happening”; see cadenza
Explanation
A chance is a possibility — but it's not a sure thing. There could be a chance of rain today or a chance you'll be the lead in the school play. Chance is sometimes about opportunity, as in getting a chance to try out for the baseball team. Sometimes it's just luck, as in taking a chance on a new car through a raffle at school. You could meet someone by chance, and you could say, "I chanced upon him at a coffee shop." Sometimes the word implies danger, as in "He took a chance when he signed up for skydiving." In any case, a chance is never a sure thing.
Vocabulary lists containing chance
Statistics and Probability - Middle School
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Workshop 3, Part 1
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The noise of backhoes, cranes and bulldozers echoed across Colombia's quake-hit cities on Sunday as workers labored to remove rubble, though the chance of finding survivors was slim a week after the disaster.
From Barron's ● Aug. 17, 2026
The Dodgers had a chance to crawl closer with one out in the eighth, with Teoscar Hernández on third and Hunter Feduccia on first.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2026
Cassidy also warned that requiring families to return repeatedly increases the chance children will miss doses, leaving them — and others — vulnerable to preventable illnesses.
From Salon ● Aug. 16, 2026
Bare’s battle looks to these folks like a fight against their town’s chance at a better future.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026
“Nothing! I just figured that we had a chance to escape if we left right away, before Miss Clerk had settled back in.”
From "The Brightwood Code" by Monica Hesse
The chances of a missile attack on Kyiv that night were around 50 percent, according to the administrator of a social media channel monitoring Russian air raids.
From Barron's ● Aug. 16, 2026
But Green advises it is "foolish" to develop land without permission because it "reduces... chances" of getting work eventually approved.
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026
Lawyers for Mangione say state and federal authorities coordinated to maximize the chances of a conviction and increase the potential punishment.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
The chances of you having another big-ticket expense in the next couple of years is reduced.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 13, 2026
By making the implementation an executive action headed by Washington, Jefferson and Madison demonstrated that, “plighted faith” notwithstanding, they were taking no chances.
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
Ionic Mineral Technologies was mining the clay in Utah when it chanced upon what could be the critical mineral equivalent of a gold mine.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 11, 2025
Motie, having earlier hit Rashid's hat-trick ball for six, chanced his arm with a counter-attack and ended up adding 91 in 68 balls with Alzarri Joseph.
From BBC ● Jun. 3, 2025
He started out as a fiction writer who, while living in Paris, chanced upon avant-garde jazz and took up the saxophone.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 16, 2025
Walter Shawlee chanced upon a slide rule from high school while looking through a drawer at his home in Kelowna, British Columbia.
From New York Times ● Feb. 10, 2024
I chanced it after it had been silent for a minute.
From "Code Name Kingfisher" by Liz Kessler
If chancing the arm sounds simple, look what happened when Zak Crawley tried the same.
From BBC ● Dec. 6, 2024
Like Friday nights at Blockbuster back in the day, the pleasure of Shudder is in chancing upon under-the-radar stuff.
From New York Times ● Aug. 15, 2019
“You’re always chancing it when you come back,” Romo said during his postgame news conference on Thanksgiving.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 3, 2015
“You’re always chancing it when you come back,” Romo said.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 27, 2015
“We will,” Lily replies, chancing a smile at me.
From "How to Disappear Completely" by Ali Standish
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
