Amulet Atlas

wordsluck

said luck

also: luk · gelucke · gelücke · good luck charm

wordBritain and IrelandWestern EuropeNorth AmericaEverywhereUnited KingdomUnited States of AmericaNetherlandsGermany

The word the whole 'good luck charm' category hangs on in English, and a late arrival that came in through a card game. Wikipedia's article sets out three conditions for it: luck is good or bad, luck is the result of chance, and luck applies to a sentient being. Nothing in that definition involves a god, which is exactly what changed when the word arrived.

cited

Middle Low German, Dutch or Frisian luk, a short form of gelucke (Middle High German gelücke) > English luck
First written down: the 1480s in English (Wikipedia's Luck article).
It likely entered English as a gambling term, and the context of gambling stays detectable in the word's connotations. Before it, Old and Middle English said speed (Old English spēd, Middle English spede) for good fortune — a word of fate or divine help, not of chance: 'Christ be our speed', in William Robertson's Phraseologia generalis of 1693. Chance itself is a Latin loanword through Old French cheance, from Late Latin cadentia, 'falling', taken into Middle English from the late thirteenth century. Wikipedia's article also compares old Slavic lukyj and old Russian luchaj. cited

When

in English from the 1480s still carried cited

How the date is knowntextual — a dated text describes it

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The story

English managed without it until the 1480s. What it had instead was speed — Old English spēd — which meant good fortune and also prosperity, profit and abundance, and which named help rather than chance. A bestower of success could be called a speed. Then luck came in from Low German, Dutch or Frisian, probably at a gaming table, and it named something else: a personal chance event, with nobody behind it.

The idea it needed had arrived a couple of centuries earlier. Chance, from Old French cheance and Late Latin cadentia, literally describes an outcome as a falling — as of dice — and English took it from the late thirteenth century. Fortuna, the Roman goddess, was a popular medieval allegory, and learned writers of the High Middle Ages made her a servant of God distributing success and failure in a fickle way, which is how chance was fitted into a Christian frame without being given a will of its own.

The symbols the word gathers are local and contradictory. Seven is a lucky number in Christian-influenced cultures, eight in Chinese-influenced ones. In Chinese and Japanese, four is unlucky because it sounds like the word for death. Greek practice counts entering and leaving a house by different doors, and breaking a mirror, as unlucky; Navajo practice counts throwing rocks into a whirlwind. In Western practice, opening an umbrella indoors may be counted unlucky partly because it can poke somebody in the eye, and shaking hands with a chimney sweep counted lucky partly because it is a kind but unpleasant thing to do.

The gods stayed on for a while beside it: Fortuna and Felicitas in Roman religion, Dedun in Nubian religion, the Seven Lucky Gods in Japan, Lakshmi and her inauspicious counterpart Alakshmi in Hinduism.

Inference — the arrival of luck is the arrival of the idea that the outcome is nobody's decision. An object bought against that is a different object from one bought to petition somebody, even when it is the same object on the same string. Half the arguments in this atlas about whether a charm is devotional or commercial are really arguments about which of those two words the buyer is using.

cited

What this is near

kincharmthe word it is welded to — good luck charm is the compound, and neither half means what it used tokinmascotthe French import that took the luck-bringing job in sport and commerce four centuries latertermFour-leaf cloverthe object an English speaker names first when the word is saidtermRabbit's footthe other one, and the one that shows how little the word cares where an object came fromcontrastManeki-nekowhat the word is used to translate in a Japanese shop window, flattening a beckoning cat into a luck objectcontrastfuthe Chinese character English renders as luck, losing the pun the whole practice runs ontermGame-day charmthe sense at its most modern and most literal: an object carried against one specific uncertain outcome

What names this one

Each in its own words, from its own page.

termFour-leaf cloverthe word that has entirely replaced protection here — nothing in this record names a harm it turns awaytermGame-day charmthe word the whole practice runs on, and the one nobody in a clubhouse definestermHorseshoethe word that has replaced protection in most present-day talk about ittermOmikujithe word this object grades, in seven or nine steps from great blessing to great misfortunetermRabbit's footthe single word that now covers everything this charm was once specific abouttermAlan Dundesthe word whose folk use he treated as data rather than as errorkincharmthe word it is welded to — good luck charm is the compound most English speakers actually usecontrastfuthe English word that translates 福 and carries none of the punkinmascotthe word it imports into English commerce — mascotte glossed as lucky charm, nothing more complicated

Where this came from

Elsewhere

Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.

Pass it on
BlueskyMastodonRedditWhatsAppEmail