Meanings
- idiomaticLittle or no likelihood.
"Poor old boy was in a pretty bad way. Fact is,I didn't give him a dog's chance."
1936, F.J. Thwaites, chapter XVII, in The Redemption, Sydney: H. John Edwards, published 1940, page 1771 more example
One day, more than 60 years ago, we went as a family to the National Wallace Monument. My father took a binary, black-and-white approach to people and things: in toothpaste, Colgate was bad and Euthymol good; in bicycles, Raleigh was preferred to BSA; in Polar explorers, Captain Scott didn’t stand a dog’s chance against Amundsen.
2014 September 16, Ian Jack, “Is this the end of Britishness”, in The GuardianSynonyms: snowball's chance in hell
Synonyms & antonyms
nounLittle or no likelihood.
Cite this entry
dog's chance. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dog's%20chance
“dog's chance.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dog's%20chance. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “dog's chance,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dog's%20chance.
Source: dog's chance on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.