lottery
Plurallotteries
- 1A scheme for handing out prizes by chance, in which numbered tickets are drawn and only some win while the rest come up blank.
The state lottery raised millions of dollars for public schools last year.
Thousands enter the national lottery each week, but only a handful ever claim prizes.
Similardraw, lotto, sweepstake, raffle
Note
Italian lotteria lies behind it, built on the same root as Old English hlot, the ancestor of lot. At heart, then, a lottery is a casting of lots. French loterie took a different route, from Middle Dutch. The everyday verb is play: you play the lottery. Within the scheme, winning tickets draw prizes, and the rest draw blanks.
- 2Any matter whose outcome is determined by chance rather than by merit or effort.
For many families, finding affordable housing has become a cruel lottery.
Whether a submitted manuscript ever gets read at all is something of a lottery.
Similargamble, crapshoot, toss-up
Oppositecertainty
Note
Here the drawing of tickets becomes a comment on unpredictability, where luck rather than merit settles the result. Speakers usually soften it with a hedge such as a bit of a lottery or something of a lottery. It is often followed by a whether-clause: it's a bit of a lottery whether we'll get a good table. It grew directly from the prize-drawing scheme.
- 3A portion or share assigned to a person; that which falls to one as an allotted part.
Note
A lost use that stays closer to the root the word shares with lot. It meant not a draw for prizes but the portion that falls to someone, an allotment. Readers meet it only in older texts, where it names an assigned share rather than a gamble. In modern writing, choose allotment or share instead, because today every reader will hear the prize-drawing scheme.
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Origin
Borrowed from Italian "lotteria," which comes from the same root as Old English "hlot" (related to English "lot"); compare French "loterie." It can be seen as "lot" plus "-ery."