chancing

Pluralchancings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of chance.

   Chancing a glance over his shoulder, he slipped out the back door.

   Investors are chancing huge sums on an untested market.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs: the participle in progressive and adverbial clauses (they are chancing it; chancing a glance), and the gerund that works as a noun (chancing it was foolish). In current use it usually means 'risking' or 'discovering by luck'. The 'happening' and 'befalling' meanings are archaic, and English in Belize and Nigeria adds its own senses of 'swindling' and 'jumping the queue'.

2. 2
   noun

   An event or occurrence that comes about by luck rather than by design.

   Although some of the subjects treated of are deciduous, all of them last for seasons; and such is the intention of the book, whatever may be its chance in a world of chancings.

   1832, Robert Mudie, The Botanic Annual

   Note

   A noun that likes the plural and the poem: Robert Mudie's The Botanic Annual (1832) speaks of "a world of chancings," and Thomas Hardy, in A Procession of Dead Days (1922), of "better or worse / Chancings." Both writers use it for the endless run of accidents that shape a life. Plain prose would say chances or happenings. Chancings lends a reflective, slightly old-fashioned tone.

3. 3
   nounPhilippinesuncountable

   A sexual advance made through suggestive physical contact.

   She reported his chancing to the manager the following morning.

   His persistent chancing on the dance floor got him thrown out of the club.

   Similargroping

   Note

   Philippine English uses the noun for a pass made by touch rather than words: a hand, a lean, a body pressed too close. Elsewhere the spelling reads only as the -ing form of chance, so a listener from outside the Philippines may hear 'taking a risk'. Use it for the unwanted contact itself, and make the context plain when writing for readers from other countries.

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