A lottery is an arrangement for distributing something (usually money or prizes) among a group of people who have purchased chances, called tickets. The tickets bear numbers or symbols that are drawn at random and if those symbols or numbers match the winning ones, the ticket holders receive the prize. Lottery is also used to describe other kinds of arrangements in which the outcome depends largely on chance, such as the stock market.
The word comes from the Dutch noun lot, meaning fate or fortune, and it’s been in usage for centuries. In fact, the earliest known European lottery dates back to the 17th century and was used to raise funds for a wide variety of public usages. The Dutch state-owned Staatsloterij is still running today, and it has the distinction of being the world’s oldest lottery.
While there’s an inextricable human impulse to play a lottery, it’s important to consider what the games are really doing. The biggest thing is that they’re dangling the promise of instant riches in a time of limited social mobility. That’s not just a little bit manipulative, it’s a big deal.
There’s another thing that’s interesting about lotteries, too: they’re a kind of voluntary taxation. People pay in and maybe win some money, but most of the money goes to things like schools and roads, and that’s supposed to be a better alternative to the kinds of taxes we see on cigarettes or alcohol.
But that’s not entirely true. Depending on how it’s set up, the prizes in a lottery are often lower than the money that is paid in, and it may take quite a while before the advertised winners are actually awarded their prizes. That’s why it’s so important to check the odds before you buy a ticket.
Using the Internet to search for information about lotteries is a good place to start, and it’s easy enough to find some good information out there. Some sites are more in-depth than others and might give you a more complete picture of how the process works.
Some people might have some qualms about the way a lottery is run, but most of them don’t have a problem with it as long as the money is going to a good cause. Besides, some states rely on that revenue to help fund the rest of their services and maybe even get rid of some onerous taxes.
These examples have been automatically selected and may contain sensitive content. This is because they are based on real-world data and are not controlled by Merriam-Webster or its editors.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to illustrate current usage of the word ‘lottery.’ Click here to view more examples.
