Other forms: potlucks
A potluck is a shared meal where every guest brings a dish. A potluck supper, bring something to the potluck, a church potluck.
It is chiefly American, and Britain would call it a bring-a-dish. The older phrase, to take potluck, means to eat whatever the household happens to have — the luck of the pot — and had nothing to do with guests bringing anything.
1nounpotluckA shared meal where every guest brings a dish.
“Everyone brought something to the office potluck, from salads to cakes.”
Patterna potluck dinner / supper / lunch · bring sth to a potluck · hold a potluck
potluck is a meal.
Pot plus luck, first meaning whatever happened to be in the pot when a guest arrived.
From pot + luck. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, sense 3 (“a shared meal consisting of whatever guests have brought”) is unlikely to have been influenced by potlatch.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA