luck [LME] The Old English word for that which determines events was weird ‘fate, fortune’, which only came to mean strange or supernatural in the early 19th century. Destiny [ME] came later via French from Latin destinare ‘make firm, establish’, *fate from Italian, and luck from Dutch. Lucky is Late Middle English, and people have been wishing each other good luck since the 1530s. The idea of lucky at cards, unlucky in love is already a commonplace in Jonathan Swift’s Polite Conversation in 1738: ‘Well, Miss, you’ll have a sad husband, you have such good luck at cards.’