out of luck
43
4.1
- idiom
- Informal
:
sin suerte
- You're out of luck.
If you forgot, you're out of luck.
- If you forgot, you're out of luck.
- But if he chooses randomly, then like I'm, I'm out of luck.
- If we lost them like this, we'd be plum out of luck on all the data on these drives.
- But if you ever had an issue, you were pretty much out of luck.
- That way everybody knows what is expected because otherwise you're out of luck.
- But if you have medium to deep, you're out of luck with this one because the shade range is just so limited.
- You have to reach a climax where it looks like the the characters are, you know, shit out of luck and they're going to die.
- You have to reach a climax where it looks like the the characters are, you know, shit out of luck and they're gonna die.
Examples
-
Are you out of luck if no research takes place at your facility?
Academic text (2000) -
At first, it seemed like he was out of luck, with the mud blocking this tunnel completely.
Fiction book (1992) -
Looks like we may be out of luck
-
Looks like we"re out of luck.
-
If so, he was out of luck and I was out of a job.
Fiction book (2002) -
Could more than one team be out of luck at the same time?
Blog text (19) -
Tired of being out of shape and out of luck with the opposite sex?
-
Guess you're out of luck.
-
If you didn't preorder, you might be out of luck: The system's basically already sold out everywhere.
Blog text (10) -
It seems that when the bus broke down, we were all out of luck and had to find another way home.
Synonyms
7
6.7
Having bad luck, often with money
2
5.3
A person who has many bad things happen to them
1
9.9
In a situation with no choice and no help to fix a problem
Antonyms
How Lucky
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'out of' functions as a productive pattern meaning 'without' or 'lacking' and 'luck' means good fortune, so a learner who knows the constituents can infer 'having no luck or success'. This construction is common and parallels equivalent patterns in other languages, making the phrase immediately understandable to B1 learners.
Etymology
The expression out of luck may come from the simple image of running 'out' of something you need, like a shop with no bread, but the thing missing is luck. So, if you are out of luck, you have 'no luck left' and cannot get what you want, which is why it means 'having no success'.