IDIOMS: THE GHOST OF A CHANCE

“I don’t stand a ghost of a chance with you,” wrote Bing Crosby in 1932, in a song of unrequited love later covered by Frank Sinatra and Billie Holliday. The idiom ‘the ghost of a chance’ means there is a very small or slight possibility that something will happen. The ghost is used to suggest something fragile, almost transparent and its inclusion places emotional emphasis on the fact that there really is no hope at all. You could say, for example: “there is the ghost of a chance that we can spend the weekend in Paris,” meaning that it is unlikely, but not impossible. Indeed, for positive thinkers
the ghost of a chance may be enough: in 1991 the rock band Rush sang: “I believe there’s a ghost of a chance. We can find someone to love”.