by chance

Questions about by chance

What does by chance mean?

by chance means "through chance". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for by chance?

Close synonyms include perchance, haply, by luck, accidentally, circumstantially. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is by chance a common word?

by chance is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.