stroke of luck
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
An unexpected and fortunate event
Literally: a blow or hit of good fortune
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
We then had a stroke of luck as Filden I broke down in Dieppe and the owner was sent to see if he could locate the trouble.
The years of work and attention were bearing fruit now, and suddenly this stroke of luck with Betty.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “stroke of luck” mean?
An unexpected and fortunate event Literally: a blow or hit of good fortune
Is “stroke of luck” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.