the.com/lottery
a tax on people bad at math, paid gladly for sixty seconds of maybe.
means A game of chance in which people buy numbered tickets and winners are chosen at random, often for a large cash prize.
from From the Dutch 'loterij' (and 'lot,' meaning fate or share), which came into English in the 16th century. The root is the much older Germanic 'lot' — the same word as the small object once cast or drawn to let chance decide a matter, as in 'casting lots.' So a lottery is, quite literally, a place where you buy a fistful of fate.
- odds
- You're likelier struck by lightning than hitting jackpot.
- old
- China's Han dynasty used lotteries to fund the Great Wall.
- curse
- Many big winners go broke within a few years.
- funds
- Funded Harvard, Yale, and early American roads.
- smarts
- Buying two tickets barely doubles your basically-zero chance.
powerball — us multi-state lottery with $2.04 billion jackpot won in november 2022
mega millions — us lottery with $1.537 billion jackpot won in october 2018
uk national lottery — british weekly draw established 1994, largest jackpot £66 million in 2016
el gordo — spanish christmas lottery drawing since 1812, distributes over €2 billion annually