fat chance


Very little or no possibility, as in A fact chance he has of coming in first, or You think they'll get married? Fat chance! A related expression is a fat lot, meaning “very little or none at all,” as in A fat lot of good it will do her. The first of these slangy sarcastic usages dates from the early 1900s, the second from the 1890s.

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

How to use fat chance in a sentence

  • fat chance we have of winning now,” Dan said as the final event of the meet was called.

  • You had a fat chance of talking the old Major out of anything!

    Fore! | Charles Emmett Van Loan
  • And he doesn't tell me anything except that we stand a fat chance of losing everything.

    Big Timber | Bertrand W. Sinclair
  • fat chance of digging up a live Indian in Webster City,” he scoffed.