"Chinaman's chance" meaning in English

See Chinaman's chance in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-Chinaman's chance.ogg [Australia] Forms: Chinamen's chances [plural]
Etymology: Originally a reference to the socio-economic prospects of immigrant Chinese labour in the United States in the 19th century, which often involved highly dangerous work on the railroads. Head templates: {{en-noun|Chinamen's chances}} Chinaman's chance (plural Chinamen's chances)
  1. (idiomatic, offensive) No chance; zero possibility. Wikipedia link: Chinaman's chance Tags: idiomatic, offensive Synonyms: Chinaman's chance in Hell
    Sense id: en-Chinaman's_chance-en-noun-cN3SeBTN Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for Chinaman's chance meaning in English (2.0kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Originally a reference to the socio-economic prospects of immigrant Chinese labour in the United States in the 19th century, which often involved highly dangerous work on the railroads.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Chinamen's chances",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "Chinamen's chances"
      },
      "expansion": "Chinaman's chance (plural Chinamen's chances)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 103",
          "text": "And if I weren’t here now, Driscoll and Ann wouldn’t have a Chinaman’s chance.’",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 January 29, Richard Corliss, “Anna May Wong Did It Right”, in Time",
          "text": "The Chinese, who in the mid-19th century had come to America by the tens of thousands and helped build the transcontinental railway, were on the receiving end of much prejudicial legislation. . . . In the slang wisdom of the day, sojourners from the Middle Kingdom \"didn't stand a Chinaman's chance.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "No chance; zero possibility."
      ],
      "id": "en-Chinaman's_chance-en-noun-cN3SeBTN",
      "links": [
        [
          "zero",
          "zero"
        ],
        [
          "possibility",
          "possibility"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, offensive) No chance; zero possibility."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "Chinaman's chance in Hell"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "offensive"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Chinaman's chance"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-Chinaman's chance.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/f8/En-au-Chinaman%27s_chance.ogg/En-au-Chinaman%27s_chance.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/En-au-Chinaman%27s_chance.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "Chinaman's chance"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Originally a reference to the socio-economic prospects of immigrant Chinese labour in the United States in the 19th century, which often involved highly dangerous work on the railroads.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Chinamen's chances",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "Chinamen's chances"
      },
      "expansion": "Chinaman's chance (plural Chinamen's chances)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English offensive terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 103",
          "text": "And if I weren’t here now, Driscoll and Ann wouldn’t have a Chinaman’s chance.’",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 January 29, Richard Corliss, “Anna May Wong Did It Right”, in Time",
          "text": "The Chinese, who in the mid-19th century had come to America by the tens of thousands and helped build the transcontinental railway, were on the receiving end of much prejudicial legislation. . . . In the slang wisdom of the day, sojourners from the Middle Kingdom \"didn't stand a Chinaman's chance.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "No chance; zero possibility."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "zero",
          "zero"
        ],
        [
          "possibility",
          "possibility"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, offensive) No chance; zero possibility."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "offensive"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Chinaman's chance"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-Chinaman's chance.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/f8/En-au-Chinaman%27s_chance.ogg/En-au-Chinaman%27s_chance.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/En-au-Chinaman%27s_chance.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "Chinaman's chance in Hell"
    }
  ],
  "word": "Chinaman's chance"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.