chance

Roget category 621

5. Words relating to the voluntary powers
› 5.2. Prospective volition
›› 5.2.1. Conceptional volition

#621. [Absence of purpose in the succession of events] Chance

noun

chance etc. 156 — lot, fate etc. (necessity) 601 — luck — good luck etc. (good) 618 — mascot.
speculation, venture, stake, game of chance — mere shot, random shot — blind bargain, leap in the dark — pig in a poke etc. (uncertainty) 475 — fluke, potluck — faro bank — flyer [Slang] — limit.
uncertainty — uncertainty principle, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
drawing lots — sortilegy^†, sortition^† — sortes^†, sortes Virgilianae^† — rouge et noir [Fr.], hazard, ante, chuck-a-luck, crack-loo [U.S.], craps, faro, roulette, pitch and toss, chuck, farthing, cup tossing, heads or tails cross and pile, poker-dice — wager — bet, betting — gambling — the turf.
gaming house, gambling house, betting house — bucket shop — gambling joint — totalizator, totalizer — hell — betting ring — dice, dice box.
[person who takes chances] gambler, gamester — man of the turf — adventurer — dicer^†.

verb

chance etc. (hap) 156 — stand a chance etc. (be possible) 470.
toss up — cast lots, draw lots — leave to chance, trust to chance, leave to the chapter of accidents, trust to the chapter of accidents — tempt fortune — chance it, take one's chance, take a shot at it (attempt) 675 — run the risk, run the chance, incur the risk, incur the chance, encounter the risk, encounter the chance — stand the hazard of the die.
speculate, try one's luck, set on a cast, raffle, put into a lottery, buy a pig in a poke, shuffle the cards.
risk, venture, hazard, stake — ante — lay, lay a wager — make a bet, wager, bet, gamble, game, play for — play at chuck farthing.

adjective

fortuitous etc. 156 — unintentional, unintended — accidental — not meant — undesigned, purposed — unpremeditated etc. 612 — unforeseen, uncontemplated, never thought of.
random, indiscriminate, promiscuous — undirected — aimless, driftless^†, designless^†, purposeless, causeless — without purpose.
possible etc. 470.
unforeseeable, unpredictable, chancy, risky, speculative, dicey.

adverb

randomly, by chance, fortuitously — unpredictably, unforeseeably — casually etc. 156 — unintentionally etc. adj. — unwittingly.
en passant [Fr.], by the way, incidentally — as it may happen — at random, at a venture, at haphazard.

phrase

acierta errando [Lat.] — dextro tempore [Lat.] — fearful concatenation of circumstances" [D. Webster]; fortuitous combination of circumstances" [Dickens]; le jeu est le fils d'avarice et le pere du le jeu est le fils d'avarice et le pere du desespoir [Fr.] — the happy combination of fortuitous the happy combination of fortuitous circumstances" [Scott]; the fortuitous or casual concourse of atoms" [Bentley]; God does not play dice with the universe" [A. Einstein].

The content on this page comes straight from Project Gutenberg Etext of Roget's Thesaurus No. Two, which consists of the acclaimed work by Peter Mark Roget augmented with more recent material. Some changes were made to the formatting for improved readability.

Bold numbers signify related Roget categories. A dagger symbol (†) indicates archaic words and expressions no longer in common use.

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