Chancy
adj, name, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Uncertain; risky; hazardous.
"In winter steam contributes a fairly high proportion of its tractive effort, say 15 per cent, to heating the train. Diesels have at the moment separate oil-fired boilers which are somewhat chancy affairs, and only electric locomotives grab unlimited power for heating which does not affect their punctuality."
- 2 Subject to chance; random.
- 3 Lucky; bringing good luck. colloquial, dated
"His haggard gaze swept this way and that, seeking possible succour where reason told him there could be no succour; and then as his vision pieced together this outjutting architectural feature and that into a coherent picture of his immediate surroundings he knew where he was. The one bit of chancy luck in a sequence of direful catastrophes had brought him here[Pg 49] to this very spot. Why, this must be West Ninth Street; it had to be, it was—oh joy, it was!."
- 1 subject to accident or chance or change wordnet
- 2 of uncertain outcome; especially fraught with risk wordnet
- 1 An English surname from Old French.
- 2 A male given name transferred from the surname.
Example
More examples"Investing into stocks is a highly chancy endeavor."
Etymology
From chance + -y.
More for "chancy"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.