This paper investigates the meanings of the word "chance" in adult education. A questionnaire for assessing the level of probability understanding was administered to students in three countries--Canada, Brazil, and Hungary. Of the 18 questions on the questionnaire, four concerned language use. This paper reports on data relative to one of those questions. Students were asked to write a sentence ending with "E is something that happens by chance." The analysis found that students may have very unorthodox uses for the word "chance" and that until it is determined what students actually think chance is, there is little chance of influencing them toward using probability theory. (MVL)