Word.ws English Dictionary

by long chalks

by long chalks is the obsolete form of by a long chalk.

Meaning of by a long chalk

Prepositional phrase

  1. (Australia, UK, idiomatic, informal) To a great extent; by far.
    • [A]s regards the body of water discharged, the absolute payments made into the sea's exchequer, and the majesty of column riding downwards from the Himalaya, I believe that, since Sir Alexander Burnes's measurements, the Indus ranks foremost by a long chalk.1854, Thomas De Quincey, “System of the Heavens as Revealed by Lord Rosse’s Telescopes”, in Miscellanies: Chiefly Narrative (De Quincey’s Works; III), London: James Hogg & Sons, →OCLC, footnote *...
    Synonyms:
    by chalks, by far § Synonyms

Questions about by long chalks

What is by long chalks the obsolete form of?
By long chalks is the obsolete form of by a long chalk.

Words near by long chalks in the dictionary

  1. by juckies
  2. by Jupiter
  3. by leaps and starts
  4. by left
  5. by little and little
  6. by long chalks
  7. by means of
  8. by mistake
  9. by my faith
  10. by name
  11. by nature

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: by long chalks (page history and authors); by a long chalk (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “by long chalks.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/by_long_chalks. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.