Word.ws English Dictionary

Tinker to Evers to Chance

Tinker to Evers to Chance proper noun: a famous baseball infield double-play combination.

Proper noun

Tinker to Evers to Chance

  1. A famous baseball infield double-play combination.

Noun

Tinker to Evers to Chance

  1. (US, idiomatic) A task accomplished quickly by well-executed teamwork; those involved in the teamwork.
    • The sonarman picks up the enemy, shoots the position to the radar controller sitting near him, and the radar controller, in a Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance play, vectors a hovering helicopter to the spot.1957 September, “Can we defend our coasts against Russian subs?”, in Popular Science, volume 171, number 3, page 161
    • It was like Tinker to Evers to Chance. Colson-Chance then flipped the good news to Hugh Scott, who read Mrs. Beard's denial on the Senate floor that same day.1974, Carl Bernstein with Bob Woodward, All the President's Men, page 256

Examples of Tinker to Evers to Chance in a sentence

  • When it comes to computers, though, systems integration is too often more reminiscent of the Keystone Kops than Tinker to Evers to Chance.1990, Traffic world, page 37:
  • Spiegel caught the names Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, whom he gathered were a kind of upscale Tinker to Evers to Chance.2001, Richard Powers, Plowing the Dark, page 204:

Forms of Tinker to Evers to Chance

alternative formTinker to Evans to Chance

Origin of Tinker to Evers to Chance

A reference to a double play completed by Chicago Cubs shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance, famously eulogized in a poem.

Questions about Tinker to Evers to Chance

What does Tinker to Evers to Chance mean?
Tinker to Evers to Chance means a famous baseball infield double-play combination.
How do you use Tinker to Evers to Chance in a sentence?
When it comes to computers, though, systems integration is too often more reminiscent of the Keystone Kops than Tinker to Evers to Chance.
What part of speech is Tinker to Evers to Chance?
Tinker to Evers to Chance can be a proper noun or a noun.

Words near Tinker to Evers to Chance in the dictionary

  1. tinkalite
  2. tinked
  3. tinker
  4. tinker tailor grass
  5. Tinker to Evans to Chance
  6. Tinker to Evers to Chance
  7. tinker up
  8. tinker's curse
  9. tinker's cuss
  10. tinker's dam
  11. tinker's damn

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Tinker to Evers to Chance (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-Tinker to Evers to Chance.ogg.

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