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Any business venture in involving unusual risks, with a chance for large profits.

Formerly the title of the sealer of writs in chancery. Mozley & W.

t easily moved, shaken, or overthrown; fixed; as, a stable government. In this region of chance, . . . where nothing is stable. Rogers.

a project. And answered with such craft as women use, Guilty or guilties, to stave off a chance That breaks upon them perilously. Tennyson.

ak. I do in justice charge thee . . . That thou commend it strangely to some place Where chance may nurse or end it. Shak.

To strike or happen (upon a person or thing) without design; to fall or light by chance; -- with on, upon, or against. Ovid stumbled, by some inadvertency, upon Livia in a bath. Dryden. Forth as she waddled in the brake, A gray goose stumbled on a snake. C. Smart.

e; actually existing; real; as, substantial life. Milton. If this atheist would have his chance to be real and substantial agent, he is more stupid than the vulgar. Bentley.

Law), to petition for and take out, or to apply for and obtain; as, to sue out a writ in chancery; to sue out a pardon for a criminal.

; prosecution of right before any tribunal; as, a civil suit; a criminal suit; a suit in chancery. I arrest thee at the suit of Count Orsino. Shak. In England the several suits, or remedial instruments of justice, are distinguished into three kinds -- actions personal, real, and mixed. Blackstone.

The deputy of an ecclesiastical judge, most commonly of a bishop or his chancellor, especially a deputy who grants marriage licenses. [Eng.]

int interest in an estate, to take the whole estate upon the death of other. Blackstone. Chance of survivorship, the chance that a person of a given age has of surviving another of a giving age; thus, by the Carlisle tables of mortality the chances of survivorship for two persons, aged 25 and 65, are 89 and 11 respecti…

Stamp; character; nature. This success would look like chance, if it were perpetual, and always of the same tenor. Dryden.

Success; fortune; luck; chance. [Obs.] Evil thedom on his monk's snout. Chaucer.

A hint, or secret intimation, as to the chances in a horse race, or the like. [Sporting Cant]

at cards, dice, or dominoes; a card, die, or domino of three spots or pips. Seven is my chance and thine is cinq and trey. Chaucer.

To obtain victory; to be successful; to prevail. Triumphing over death, and chance, and thee, O Time. Milton. On this occasion, however, genius triumphed. Macaulay.

very man that cometh into the world. John i. 9. True ease in writing comes from art, not chance. Pope.

A winning card; one of a particular suit (usually determined by chance for each deal) any card of which takes any card of the other suits.

- To turn the stomach of, to nauseate; to sicken. -- To turn the tables, to reverse the chances or conditions of success or superiority; to give the advantage to the person or side previously at a disadvantage. -- To turn tippet, to make a change. [Obs.] B. Jonson. -- To turn to profit, advantage, etc., to make prof…

Any theory which conceives chance as an objective reality; esp., a theory of evolution which considers that variation may be purely fortuitous.