windfall

UK/ˈwɪnd.fɔːl/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,396 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: windfalls

A windfall is an unexpected piece of good fortune, often money. A tax windfall, an unexpected windfall, windfall profits.

The literal meaning is fruit blown down from a tree, which anybody could gather without picking it, and that is the whole image. A windfall tax is a one-off levy on profits a company did nothing to earn.

Definitions of windfall

1nounwindfallAn unexpected piece of good fortune, often money.B2+
“She used her lottery windfall to pay off the mortgage.”

windfall is a fortune.

Where it comes from

Wind plus fall, from fruit or timber blown down and free to be gathered.

Middle English
windfal
English, today
windfall

From Middle English windfal, wyndfall, equivalent to wind + fall. Cognate with Middle High German wintval, wintfal, German Windfall.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

windfall in the wild

There have been windfall taxes in various countries across the world, including Australia, Italy, and Mongolia.
Windfall tax
A windfall gain is a sudden and usually unexpected addition to income which is substantially above the norm.
Windfall gain
The Windfall tax or windfall profits tax in Mongolia was a taxation on the profits made by mining companies operating in Mongolia.
Windfall tax (Mongolia)
"Despite its name, the crude oil windfall profit tax... was not a tax on profits.
Crude Oil Windfall Profit Tax Act of 1980

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.

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