Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Accidental; casual; fortuitous.
  • Non-essential; merely incidental and subsidiary; accidental or of the nature of an accident.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective obsolete Fortuitous; casual.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective obsolete fortuitous; casual

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

chance +‎ -able

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Examples

  • And so far were they carried into the admiration thereof, that they thought in the chanceable hitting upon any such verses great foretokens of their following fortunes were placed.

    English literary criticism Various

  • To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip.

    Ulysses James Joyce 1911

  • And so far were they carried into the admiration thereof, that they thought in the chanceable hitting upon any such verses great fore-tokens of their following fortunes were placed; whereupon grew the word of Sortes Virgilianæ, when by sudden opening Virgil’s book they lighted upon some verse of his making.

    The Defense of Poesy 1909

  • To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul’s men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip.

    Ulysses 2003

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