Word.ws English Dictionary

chance-medleys

chance-medleys is the plural of chance-medley.

Meaning of chance-medley

Noun

chance-medley (countable and uncountable, plural chance-medleys)

  1. (historical) The killing of another in self-defence upon a sudden and unpremeditated encounter.
    • Manſlaughter, otherwiſe called Chancemedley, is when two do fight together upon the ſudden, and by meer Chance, without any Malice precedent, and one of them doth kill the other; this alſo is Felony of Death.1618, Michael Dalton, chapter CXLVI, in The Country Justice, Savoy: Henry Lintot, published 1746, page 333
  2. (obsolete) Luck; chance; accident.
    • This is true in the general right of marriage, but not in the chance-medley of every particular match.1645, John Milton, Tetrachordon
    Synonyms:
    fortune

Questions about chance-medleys

What is chance-medleys the plural of?
Chance-medleys is the plural of chance-medley.

Words near chance-medleys in the dictionary

  1. chance the ducks
  2. chance upon
  3. chance would be a fine thing
  4. chance'd be a fine thing
  5. chance-medley
  6. chance-medleys
  7. chanceable
  8. chanceably
  9. chanced
  10. chanced on
  11. chanced one's arm

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chance-medleys (page history and authors); chance-medley (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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