Luck is what happens to you that nobody arranged. Finding a seat on a packed train, or a flat tyre on the one morning you left early.
On its own, luck leans good: wish me luck, with any luck, we were in luck, better luck next time. Put a word in front and you pick the side — good luck, bad luck, rotten luck, hard luck. It is uncountable, so there is no a luck and no lucks; for a single piece of it you say a stroke of luck or a bit of luck. The adjective lucky belongs to the person or the object — a lucky man, a lucky coin — while luck itself belongs to the event: that was luck, not skill. Luck out is a trap for learners: in American English it means you got lucky, not that your luck ran out.
1nounluckThe way things happen by chance, good or bad, with nobody controlling it.~47%
“Half of it was hard work and half of it was luck.”
synonyms: chance
2nounsuccessGood things happening by chance; success that was not earned.~53%
“She has had no luck with landlords this year.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 15 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
luck is a force outside anyone's control.
Also accepted in games: fortune
Luck arrived in English late, borrowed from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German gelucke, fortune or fate — and where those languages got it, nobody knows. One guess links it to German Lucke, a gap or an opening, in the sense of a space that opens up, since an opening is a chance. Its cousins are spread across northern Europe — Dutch geluk, German Gluck, Swedish lycka — and every one of them means luck and happiness at the same time.
Middle Low German
lücke
Middle Dutch
luc
Middle English
luk
English, today
luck
Built from
From Middle English luk, lukke, from Middle Dutch luc, geluc, gelucke (“good luck, fortune”) or Middle Low German lücke, gelücke (“lot, fortune, fate, luck”), of unknown origin; perhaps ultimately related to German Lücke (“gap, opening”) in the sense of "space or opportunity", hence "chance". Cognate with West Frisian gelok (“luck”), stq Gluk (“luck”), Dutch luk, geluk (“luck, happiness”), nds-nl luk (“luck”), German Low German - and German Glück (“luck, good fortune, happiness”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål lykke (“luck, happiness”), Norwegian Nynorsk lukke (“luck, happiness”), Swedish lycka (“luck, happiness”), Icelandic lukka (“happiness”). According to the OED, it may be related to lock. A loanword into English in the 15th century (probably as a gambling term), Middle Dutch luc, geluc has parallels with Middle High German lücke, gelücke "luck, skill, chance, profession, livelihood"; whence Modern German Glück. The word occurs only from the 12th century, apparently first in Rhine Frankish. Perhaps from a Frankish galukki, derived from Proto-Germanic lukjǭ (“opening”). The word enters standard Middle High German during the 13th century, and spreads to English and Scandinavian in the Late Middle Ages. Its origin seems to have been regional or dialectal, and there were competing German words such as gevelle or schick, or the Latinate fortūne from Latin fortūna. Its etymology is unknown, although there are numerous proposals as to its derivations from a number of roots. Use as a verb in American English is late (1940s), but there was a Middle English verb lukken (“to chance, to happen by good fortune”) in the 15th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA