"fat chance" meaning in English

See fat chance in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-fat chance.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} fat chance (uncountable)
  1. (idiomatic, colloquial, sarcastic) Little or no chance, a low or nonexistent likelihood of occurrence or success. Wikipedia link: Fat Chance Tags: colloquial, idiomatic, sarcastic, uncountable Related terms: a fat lot, no chance, not a chance, chance'd be a fine thing, slim chance
    Sense id: en-fat_chance-en-noun-QiY3L2RB

Download JSON data for fat chance meaning in English (1.8kB)

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      "expansion": "fat chance (uncountable)",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Fat chance that I’ll ever go back to Swansea.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1970 June 8, Tom Wolfe, “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's”, in New York Magazine",
          "text": "As soon as the word comes out of your mouth […] your own servant is going to size you up as one of those limousine liberals, or whatever epithet they use, who are busy pouring white soul all over the black movement, and would you do as much for the white lower class, for the domestics of the East Side, for example, fat chance, sahib.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Little or no chance, a low or nonexistent likelihood of occurrence or success."
      ],
      "id": "en-fat_chance-en-noun-QiY3L2RB",
      "links": [
        [
          "sarcastic",
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        [
          "Little",
          "little"
        ],
        [
          "no",
          "no"
        ],
        [
          "chance",
          "chance"
        ],
        [
          "low",
          "low"
        ],
        [
          "nonexistent",
          "nonexistent"
        ],
        [
          "likelihood",
          "likelihood"
        ],
        [
          "occurrence",
          "occurrence"
        ],
        [
          "success",
          "success"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, colloquial, sarcastic) Little or no chance, a low or nonexistent likelihood of occurrence or success."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "a fat lot"
        },
        {
          "word": "no chance"
        },
        {
          "word": "not a chance"
        },
        {
          "word": "chance'd be a fine thing"
        },
        {
          "word": "slim chance"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "idiomatic",
        "sarcastic",
        "uncountable"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Fat Chance"
      ]
    }
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  "sounds": [
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      "tags": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "a fat lot"
    },
    {
      "word": "no chance"
    },
    {
      "word": "not a chance"
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    {
      "word": "chance'd be a fine thing"
    },
    {
      "word": "slim chance"
    }
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        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English uncountable nouns"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Fat chance that I’ll ever go back to Swansea.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1970 June 8, Tom Wolfe, “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's”, in New York Magazine",
          "text": "As soon as the word comes out of your mouth […] your own servant is going to size you up as one of those limousine liberals, or whatever epithet they use, who are busy pouring white soul all over the black movement, and would you do as much for the white lower class, for the domestics of the East Side, for example, fat chance, sahib.",
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      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Little or no chance, a low or nonexistent likelihood of occurrence or success."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "sarcastic",
          "sarcastic"
        ],
        [
          "Little",
          "little"
        ],
        [
          "no",
          "no"
        ],
        [
          "chance",
          "chance"
        ],
        [
          "low",
          "low"
        ],
        [
          "nonexistent",
          "nonexistent"
        ],
        [
          "likelihood",
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        [
          "occurrence",
          "occurrence"
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, colloquial, sarcastic) Little or no chance, a low or nonexistent likelihood of occurrence or success."
      ],
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        "uncountable"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-13 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-01 using wiktextract (ee658f9 and be4df6b). 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.