Chancy means risky, and depending on luck. A chancy business, chancy at best, a chancy plan.
It says the outcome is not in your hands, which is a different criticism from saying a plan is bad — a chancy plan may be the only one available. It is informal and slightly old-fashioned. Note chance, and that dicey does the same work in more recent slang.
1adjectivechancyRisky, and depending on luck.
“Crossing the mountain pass this late in the year is a bit chancy, so let's wait for spring.”
synonyms: dicey, risky
chancy is a quality of risk.
Chance plus -y. Chance comes from Old French cheance, a falling, from Latin cadere, to fall.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱh₂d-
Middle English
chaunce
English
chance
English, today
chancy
From chance + y. chance comes from Middle English chaunce. From Middle English chance, cheance, chaunce, cheaunce, a borrowing from Old French cheance (“accident, chance, luck”), from Vulgar Latin cadentia (“falling”), from Latin cadere (“to fall, to die, to happen, occur”). a doublet of cadence and cadenza.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA