Every year, there is a Super Bowl party that I attend. It is great and fun to watch the game with friends, eating food. But, what makes Super Bowl party even more fun? They are Super Bowl ads.

One of the funniest ad during 2011 Super Bowl game was Pepsi MAX. Pay attention to what the woman is saying as you watch, not the guy’s part.

She said, “Not a chance!” What does it mean? Ha.. Am I joking here? We all know what that means. It simply means “impossible or don’t even think about it.”

OK! How about this expression, fat chance? Can you guess? Assuming that you do not know or have never heard of it, it sounds like something has a lot of chance which is exactly opposite to ‘not a chance.” Don’t you agree?

About three days ago, I stumbled upon an article where I saw this expression. Since I have never heard of it before, I thought the expression means a lot of chance but then the context does not make sense at all. I was scratching my head. “This cannot be correct.” So, I had to look it up. Then, there was a surprise! You know what! It has the same meaning to ‘not a chance.’ Then, I was like, “That does not make sense at all. I’ve heard of a similar expression from my friends. They say fat lie or big fat lie which means a serious lie or the worst lie. Why? This fat chance is different.”

So, I researched a little more and it turns out whoever used this expression first used it sarcastically. That is why this expression is different from fat lie.

Another similar expression is slim chance. But, this one has a little different feeling. Slim chance suggests that there could be a chance but fat chance means there is no chance at all. So, once again, you should be able to feel these expressions and also it is important to show that your are being sort of sarcastic when you use ‘fat chance’ in your conversations which is tricky. Good luck!