chance'd be a fine thing
- idiom
- UK
:
sería un milagro
- You think the train will be on time? Chance'd be a fine thing.
Examples
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If we could win the lottery, chance'd be a fine thing!
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He said he might pay for dinner—chance'd be a fine thing!
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If my boss ever gave me a week off,chance'd be a fine thing.
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He thinks he will get a promotion, but chance'd be a fine thing.
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If my boss ever gave me a week off, chance'd be a fine thing!
-
You think the train will be on time? Chance'd be a fine thing.
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He said he might pay for dinner—chance'd be a fine thing!
Synonyms
2
8.1
A way to say something is very unlikely to happen
Surface Forms
Morphology
chance'd + be + a + fine + thing
The literal components ('chance' + 'be a fine thing') allow a learner to infer that having a chance would be desirable, so the basic wishful meaning is compositionally derivable. However, the expression typically carries an ironic or doubtful nuance (i.e. that this is very unlikely) and the colloquial contraction 'chance'd' may obscure structure, so the full pragmatic meaning is not fully predictable from the parts.
Etymology
Chance'd be a fine thing comes from a spoken shortening of 'chance would be a fine thing'. It treats chance like a nice gift you wish for but do not expect, so people say chance'd be a fine thing to mean 'very unlikely'.