# luck

Pronunciation: say "LUK" /lʌk/

## Noun

1. Good fortune or success, especially when it comes by chance rather than through effort, as in 'any luck?' or 'sheer luck'.
   - Simple: Good things or success that happen to you by chance.
   - _After months of searching, he finally had some luck on the job market._
   - _We tried three different stores but had no luck finding the part._
2. Chance that determines what happens to someone, sometimes regarded as a force bringing good or bad fortune.
   - Simple: Chance that makes good or bad things happen, sometimes thought of as a force.
   - _The outcome was decided by luck more than by anyone's choices._
   - _Good or bad, luck shapes much of what happens to us._

## Verb

3. To find or obtain something fortunate purely by chance rather than by design. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: To find or get something good by chance, not by trying hard.
   - _He lucked into a job offer through a friend he hadn't seen in years._
   - _Researchers sometimes luck upon important findings while studying something unrelated._

## Other meanings

- (noun) In games and computing, the output of a random number generator that determines chance-based results.

## Origin

In the 1400s English borrowed the word from Middle Dutch luc, a short form of gheluc ("good fortune"), probably as a term used in gambling, and it appears in Middle English as luk. German Glück is related, as are words in Frisian, Danish and Swedish. A Frankish *galukki may lie behind it, but its ultimate origin is unknown, and many derivations have been proposed. As a verb in American English it is a late, 20th-century use, though Middle English had a 15th-century verb lukken, meaning "to happen by chance or good fortune."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/luck (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).