Word.ws English Dictionary

chancemedley

chancemedley is the alternative spelling 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

Forms of chancemedley

pluralchancemedleys

Questions about chancemedley

What is chancemedley the alternative spelling of?
Chancemedley is the alternative spelling of chance-medley.

Words near chancemedley in the dictionary

  1. chancelours
  2. chancelries
  3. chancelry
  4. chancels
  5. chancely
  6. chancemedley
  7. chancemedleys
  8. chancer
  9. chanceries
  10. chancers
  11. chancery

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chancemedley (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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Cite this entry: “chancemedley.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chancemedley. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.