fat chance

[Lynne Murphy]

Do any of you phrase-chaser-downers know the origin of the phrase "fat
chance"?  I'm wondering if the original usage was ironic, since a "fat
chance" is really a "slim chance" and since you can only seem to use it
as an exclamation on its own--well at least according to my intuition.
I wouldn't say "He had a fat chance of getting there."  I tried to do a
quick web search for the phrase to see how others use it, but was
inundated by diet sites and fat farms.

Lynne, who likes antonyms rather too much

--

M. Lynne Murphy, Assistant Professor in Linguistics
Department of English, Baylor University
PO Box 97404, Waco, TX 76798 USA
Phone:  254-710-6983     Fax:  254-710-3894
http://www.baylor.edu/~M_Lynne_Murphy