chance your arm
chance
adjective[ before noun ]
uk /tʃɑːns/ us /tʃæns/
happening in a way that is not planned or does not have any known cause or reason:
Her chance discovery of the letters led to their publication.
chance meetingTheir relationship began with a chance meeting on a ski lift in Vail, Colorado.
chance encounterA chance encounter with another artist would change her life.

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

happening by chance with no cause or reason
randomIt was a random encounter between two long-lost friends.
chanceA chance meeting brought them back together.
arbitraryIt seems like the decision to cancel such a successful TV programme was completely arbitrary.
haphazardHer cabinets were stuffed with a haphazard jumble of books, clothes, tins of soup, and papers.
coincidentalAny similarity between the characters in this book and real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
inadvertentA good editor will catch and correct all inadvertent typos in a text.
We do not know yet whether this reported small increase is a chance occurrence or something more signficant.
Television programmes, newspaper articles, even chance events can trigger panic attacks.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Chance and randomness
accident
accident of birth
aleatory
arbitrarily
arbitrariness
crapshoot
even money
fluke
fluky
fortuitous
luck
luck into something
more by accident than designidiom
more by luck than judgmentidiom
non-purposive
randomness
serendipitous
serendipitously
sortition
stumble into something

chance | American Dictionary

chance
noun
us/tʃæns/

chancenoun (OPPORTUNITY)

[ C ]
an occasion that allows something to be done; an opportunity:
If you get a chance, come over and see me.
You had many chances to back out of the deal, and you didn’t do it.
She’d been a substitute on the team, and she wanted a chance to play every day.

chancenoun (LIKELIHOOD)

[ U ]
a level of possibility that something will happen; likelihood:
I’ve applied to seven different universities, and there’s a good chance I’ll get into two of them.

chancenoun (RISK)

[ C ]
a possibility that something bad will happen; a risk:
There’s a chance of injury in almost any sport.
You don’t get anywhere in life without taking chances.

chancenoun (LUCK)

[ U ]
the happening of something in a way that no one could have known, so that it seems to have no cause:
Four years ago we met by chance in Paris.
Do you by any chance know when the last bus leaves tonight?
chance
verb
us/tʃæns/

chanceverb (RISK)

[ T ]
to do something although it involves risk:
It’s a very popular restaurant, and we may not get a table, but let’s chance it.

chanceverb (LUCK)

[ I ]
to happen or find something in a way that is not planned or expected:
I chanced upon some old love letters in a drawer.

Examples of chance

chance
However, this finding - quite destructive for the chances of a pro-social rule of conduct - needs qualifications.
The absence of these risk factors is expected to lessen the chances of severe conflict.
There is conflicting evidence about how age affects an organization's chances of survival.
As indicated by the estimated hazard ratio, rivalries that do not experience change to democracy have greater chances of survival.
If background cases are included in the epidemiological investigation the chances of detecting the exposure responsible for the outbreak is reduced.
Increased migration over the last two decades, however, has reduced the chances that grandmothers will live in the same area as their grandchildren.
On one side, queries need to reach the largest number of peers in order to increase the chances to locate the target file.
To improve their chances of gaining the presidency they knew they would have to somehow appeal to a broader cross section of the population.
Their inclusion probably reflects a selection bias, as a higher number exposed in these premises increases the chances of the outbreak being identified.
Parameterization of the chances of contact between age groups was done based on two field studies [28, 29].
What evidence can be brought to bear, and what are the chances, in retrospect?
They might also be reinforced by developments which increased the chances of detecting breaches of the law, such as advances in technology.
Taken together, the electoral rules have significant consequences for the chances of obtaining political power.
Finally, asking subjects to rank the outcomes before they acted would have chanced a contamination of their actual dilemma behaviour.
Figure 1 is a visual representation of the marginal impact that recurring disputes have on the chances of war.
See all examples of chance
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations withchance

chance

These are words often used in combination with chance.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

best chance
Of course everybody would want for himself or herself the bestchance of the longest and best quality of life when they apply for treatment.
better chance
In this new world, without the social strife of the old, there seems to be a betterchance that the marriage might be consummated.
chance encounter
For many of them, a chanceencounter with traditional music rekindled their interest.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.
See all collocations with chance