metal rings
1 [C,U] a series of connected metal rings, used for pulling or fastening things; a length of chain used for a particular purpose:
a short length of chain * She wore a heavy gold chain around her neck. * The mayor wore his chain of office. * a bicycle chain * The prisoners were kept in chains (= with chains around their arms and legs, to prevent them from escaping).
connected things
2 [C] a series of connected things or people:
to set in motion a chain of events * a chain of command (= a system in an organization by which instructions are passed from one person to another) * mountain / island chains * Volunteers formed a human chain to rescue precious items from the burning house.
seealsoFOODCHAIN
of shops / hotels
3 [C] a group of shops/stores or hotels owned by the same company:
a chain of supermarkets / a supermarket chain
restriction
4 [C,usually pl.] (formal or literary) a thing that restricts sb's freedom or ability to do sth:
the chains of fear / misery
in house buying
5 [C,usually sing.] (BrE) a situation in which a number of people selling and buying houses must each complete the sale of their house before buying from the next person
IDIOMS see BALLn., LINKn., WEAK
verb [VN] [oftenpassive] ~ sb/sth (to sb/sth)
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for chain is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is chain a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, chain is tagged as noun.
Does chain appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — chain appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
