Chance

How to spell chance

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce chance

What does chance mean?

1. nounA possibility or likelihood of something happening, or an opportunity to do something.
2. verbTo do something risky in the hope of a good outcome; to risk.

Chance in a sentence

• noun

  There is a good chance the train will be late this evening.

• verb

  He decided to chance the longer route to avoid the roadworks.

• noun

  The interview gave her a chance to explain her experience.

• verb

  They were willing to chance a small loss for a bigger reward.

Where does chance come from?

Language of origin: French

Chance arrived in English in the 1200s through Old French, where the word was 'cheance', meaning a fall of the dice and so an outcome left to luck. That French word grew from the Vulgar Latin 'cadentia', literally 'a falling', built on the Latin verb 'cadere', meaning 'to fall'. The image is concrete: a thrown die falls and lands however fortune decides, so the act of falling came to stand for randomness and possibility. The same 'cadere' root still falls through English in relatives like 'cadence', 'decadence', 'accident', and 'coincidence', all of which carry a buried sense of something tumbling down. The simple spelling rarely troubles writers, since the 'ch' and final silent 'e' behave exactly as they look.

How the word is built

• chanc- (from Latin cadentia: a falling, as of dice)
• -e