Fat and slim are opposites. Make it make sense.
Fat chance is sarcastic, slim chance is direct
Yeah, no.
…what? No, sorry, I was offering another example, not replying to your salient point. ;-)
That ones slightly different though, because that “yeah” means “OK” or “uh”, not “yes” in this context. Its just a way to give your brain extra time to think of a response.
pedantic, yes, but I enjoy that
Full sayings:
- slim chance
- fat chance in hell
The “in hell” gets dropped from fat chance making the colloquialism confusing.
This is similar to the “blood is thicker than water” shortening of “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”, people who have always heard the first one often use it as an argument for " family sticks together "; when the saying really means the bonds we form of our own choosing are stronger than any presumed by family.
“Are you up for it?” and “Are you down for it?” both mean the same thing too
Things can burn up and down at the same time.
Gotta get up to get down
Fat chance is ironic, slim chance is not. it’s just that nobody uses fat chance in a non sarcastic manner.
They don’t mean the same thing as I understand them. Slim chance means there’s a chance but fat chance means practically no chance.
Depends on context. “Slim chance” might technically allow for a small chance, but a lot of the time it’s used, it’s used to indicate that the speaker considers there to be no actual chance. Like if you say “That’s probably not gonna work” you probably actually mean “I believe that is going to not work”.
But this discussion is interesting, because I’d imagine “fat chance” only came about as a sarcastic way of saying slim/no chance. I’m pretty sure it’s like “disgruntled” where nobody is actually gruntled. Language is delightful. :)
because the persons who came up with those phrases were Biggie Smalls and FatBoy Slim
🎵Biggie Smalls is celibate in hell, celibate in hell, celibate in hell 🎵
Fat Chance is pretty much always sarcastic. However most other common sarcastic phrases are also used sincerely, so it’s actually kind of unique. You could say Phat Chance though which would probably be sincere.
Because fat chance is said sarcastically
Fat and slim are both as far from the middle of the Gaussian;
Wait until you find out a grill utensil is called a spatula but a tool to mix baking ingredients is also called a spatula.
That’s why I call the grill one a lifter. I work in an English speaking kitchen in a non English speaking country, so a lot of my coworkers believe me on things like this. I am also trying to get them to say pasghetti.
I think “fat” is sarcastic. At least that’s how it reads to me.
fat chance is said sarcastically
This is how I felt when I tried to win an argument about ‘deceptively deep’ and found that usage was subjective and that ‘deceptively shallow’ could be used interchangeably
A fat chance means the odds are so wide it would be impossible. Like, you have so many slim chances at once on different factors for it to remotely work.
A slim chance means the odds are tight but there is an actual chance on a single factor.
One slim chance is better than 40 slim chances focused on a single goal, so fat chance.
When I use slim chance, I actually will try it if it isn’t going to work and it wouldn’t hurt to try.
Fat chance means you shouldn’t bother to try it. The stars would have to perfectly align.
“fat” ain’t “good”, brah. you gotta say “t h i c c”~
jokes aside, it’s mostly answered by other good comments here.
