potluck

Thomas Nashe used the phrase in 1592 in Pierce Penniless, writing of guests who go to dinner at pot lucke with a knight. The luck was genuine: you ate what the pot contained that day, no promises made. Pot luck meant the chance of whatever the household was cooking, not what a host might prepare in your honor. It was hospitality stripped of pretense.

Through the 17th and 18th centuries, taking potluck described any situation where one received what was available rather than what was specially arranged. The phrase stretched beyond food: you could take potluck with the weather, with lodgings, with the conversation you found yourself in. Samuel Johnson's era used it freely for any matter governed by the accident of what was already present. The luck was not fortune but the randomness of the existing supply.

American English reshaped the word in the 20th century. By the 1950s, particularly in Midwestern church communities, potluck described a communal meal where every guest brought a dish. The luck moved from the guest's uncertainty to a collective abundance that no single host could have produced alone. Civic organizations, neighborhood associations, and religious congregations adopted the format as a way to feed a crowd without burdening any one person.

The two meanings coexist in modern English without friction. You can take potluck at a restaurant, ordering whatever the kitchen has, and you can host a potluck dinner where thirty people each bring a dish. Both senses preserve the original conceit: no special preparation, no performance, only the honest offer of what is on hand. The word survived because it named something real about how people actually share food.