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In the "The Three Little Pigs", I saw a sentence

"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin."

  1. What does by mean?
    Get or take?
  2. two chins

Why are there two chins in the "not by the hair of my chinny chin chin"?
Can I say "not by the hair of my chinny chin"?

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  • "by" here is used to swear an oath. The line is in verse, and the words rhyme and have poetic meter (a beat/rhythm). Little pig, little pig, let me come in. Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin. That's why the word chin is repeated. These are not literal multiple chins.
    – Billy Kerr
    Commented Apr 18 at 9:06

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This phrase is very specific to "The Three Little Pigs". You won't find it anywhere else, and you won't see it varied in ways that change its rhythm. If it does appear elsewhere, it's an allusion to this story.

As for what it means—all you really need to know is that the sentence as a whole means "No, absolutely not."

The role of the word "by" is the same as in the idiom "to swear X by Y": historically, "if I'm lying about X, let God destroy Y" (where Y is a thing of high value to me, so you know I'm not lying). Here, if refusing to let the wolf in would cause the pigs to lose their chin hair (which evidently they highly prize), they still wouldn't let him in.

I don't recommend analyzing children's stories to this degree. Understanding the story is one thing, but you shouldn't expect that you can always apply what you hear to everyday English, as some of it is just nonsense made to be appealing and memorable.

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    Yes. Chinny-chin-chin is childish jocular reduplication. Common in children's fairy tales, like the ogre who says 'Fee fi fo fum - I smell the blood of an Englishman!'.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Apr 18 at 6:58

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