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lottery

UK/ˈlɒtəɹi/US/ˈlɑtɚi/
nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,117 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: lotteries

A lottery is a game of chance where numbers are drawn for a huge prize. Win the lottery, a lottery ticket, the national lottery.

The odds are tiny and unchanged by anything a player does, and picking birthdays only means sharing the prize with more people if it comes up. Lotteries are used to allocate scarce things fairly too — school places, visas. Note that the word came from Italian and goes back to lot.

Matt May · CC BY 2.0

Definitions of lottery

  1. 1nounlotteryA game of chance where numbers are drawn for a prize.B2

    “He won the lottery and bought his mum a house by the sea.”

lottery is a game of chance.

Where it comes from

Italian lotteria comes from a Germanic word for a lot or share. Lot and allot come from the same root.

  1. Italian

    lotteria

  2. English, today

    lottery

Borrowed from Italian lotteria, from the same root as Old English hlot (cognate with English lot). Compare French loterie (from Middle Dutch loterie). by surface analysis, lot + -ery.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Games & Toys

Practise this word

lottery in the wild

  • A lottery (or lotto) is a form of gambling that involves the drawing of numbers at random for a prize.

    Lottery

  • Some governments outlaw lotteries, while others endorse them to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery.

    Lottery

  • The lottery is administered by the Department of State and conducted under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

    Diversity Immigrant Visa

  • Powerball is an American lottery game offered by 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, U.S.

    Powerball

  • In 1995, the NHL draft lottery was introduced where only teams who had missed the playoffs could participate.

    NHL entry draft

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.