to win the lottery
37
2.8
- phrasal verb
:
ganar la lotería
- If I win the lottery, I will buy my dream house in the countryside.
You just won the lottery and then lost all your winnings.
- You just won the lottery and then lost all your winnings.
- Some of them will win the lottery, some of them won't.
- I like my job, but if I won the lottery, I wouldn't work.
- No, he won the lottery and she wanted to get her hooks into it.
- So say you see on TV someone's won the lottery.
- If a normal person won the lottery, they'd use it to not work, OK?
- You know, you can say you can't be proud of winning the lottery.
- We could say something like the world's poorest family wins the lottery.
- And This is why Jonah's smartest You can't bank on winning the lottery.
- Last one, Mateo, what's the most ridiculous thing Nick would buy if they won the lottery?
- And like I always, I'm never fortunate enough to win things like I've never won the lottery, like I've never won a bingo.
- Only if you win the lottery and those kind of things come in.
- But I saw money as wow, if I won the lottery, I would say to someone now winning the lottery, watch out.
Examples
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Many people fantasize about what they would do if they win the lottery.
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I feel like I just won the lottery.
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Only if you win the lottery and those kind of things come in.
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No, people want to win the lottery.
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I mean, if you won the lottery today, what would you even do?
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I have decided that if I ever win the lottery, I will send it all to her.
Fiction book (1999) -
"When I win the lottery, then I'll buy my parents a new house."
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I like my job, but if I won the lottery, I wouldn't work.
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Gloria is convinced that one day she will win the lottery.
Fiction book (1997) -
"If I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd go back there in a heartbeat," she says.
Academic text (2005)
Synonyms
54
3.2
To earn a lot of money, often in a short time
24
4.0
To have a big, unexpected success because of luck
1
4.3
To earn a lot of money quickly with little work
How Lucky
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'win' (to prevail/obtain victory) with 'lottery' (a game for money); knowing these constituents allows a learner to infer that someone obtains money by succeeding in a lottery. The definite article 'the' is function word noise, and the idiomatic/metaphorical extension (meaning to be very lucky) remains predictable from the base sense, so a B1 learner who knows the words will grasp the MWE.
Etymology
The phrase win the lottery comes from the image of a game where people buy a ticket and one lucky ticket is chosen so the owner wins a lot of money from the lottery. Because the prize comes by 'chance', the phrase now means 'to get a large amount of money by luck'.