lucky

lucky,[/p] fortunate, happy, providential all mean meeting with or producing a favorable outcome or an unforeseen or unpredictable success.

Lucky implies that the person or persons involved have been favored by chance and that the success has not been the result of merit or merits

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a lucky gambler

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said he was a lucky fellow not to be sent to school— Meredith

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it was a lucky day for him when he met the girl who later became his wife

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Fortunate, although it is often indistinguishable from lucky in its implications, is more formal and more likely to suggest an unanticipated absence of all handicaps and mischances or presence of such favorable circumstances as might argue the intervention of a higher power (compare fortune under CHANCE n 1) that watches over one

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in friendships I had been most fortunate— Shelley

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we are aware, too, that the critical discrimination which comes so hardly to us has in more fortunate men flashed in the very heat of creation— T. S. Eliot

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it took a very fortunate conjunction of events to bring about the rapid spread and seemingly complete victory of democracy— Dewey

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Happy differs from the preceding words chiefly in its combining the meaning of lucky or fortunate with that of its more common sense of being blessed or made glad (see GLAD) thus, a happy outcome is not only one that is fortunate but one that makes the person affected feel happy; a happy accident is an accidental event or circumstance that brings to light something that proves a treasure

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giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions— Book of Common Prayer

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Homo sapiens is among the safest of all animals, because he is omnivorous. His heredity is a mixture of happy accidents— La Barre

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Providential often carries an implication of good fortune resulting from the help or interference of Providence

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a providential escape

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I thought to myself, this can't be chance. Indeed it seemed providential— de la Mare

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Often, however, the word carries no trace of this implication and means little more than lucky or fortunate

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it was providential: the sisters had made no remark that the Critchlows might not hew— Bennett

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it was certainly most providential that I looked up at that instant, as the monster would probably, in less than a minute, have seized and dragged me into the river— Bartram

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Analogous words: *favorable, benign, auspicious, propitious: advan-tageous, *beneficial, profitable: happy, felicitous, meet (see FIT)

Antonyms: unlucky

Contrasted words: *sinister, baleful, malefic, maleficent, malign