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Bookmark or Share- etymology - What was the first use of the saying, "You miss 100% of the ...Wayne Gretzky appears to be the earliest attributed source of this particular expression, although two older sports-related expression say much the same thing: "You can't score if you don't shoot" and "You can't hit the ball if you don't swing."
- What is the difference between "probably" and "possibly"?Probably implies that based on probability the chances to happen are good, let´s say above 50%. Remember that Probable, probability, are math terms in statistics. Possibility is not used because it works even against all odds. Just having the minimal chance, something is possible. But is probably not going to work, because the chances are too low.
- nouns - English Language & Usage Stack ExchangeAll three are grammatical and idiomatic. A chance can be all of these things, and more. The top 50 collocations from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC) look as follows:
- meaning - "Chance of [gerund]" vs. "chance at [gerund]" - English ...The chances of dying in an airplane crash are nearly 100%. Using " chances at dying " doesn't seem right in the above statement. Are there any general usage guidelines for this?
- grammaticality - plenty of chance or plenty of chances - English ...Is it correct to say 'plenty of chance' rather than 'plenty of chances' or are they both acceptable? You certainly wouldn't say 'many chance' but 'many chances'. Is there something about the phrase 'plenty of' or is it that the word 'chance' can be used to mean more than one opportunity, thus intrinsically denoting a plurality of concept?
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