windfall

What it means

A windfall is a piece of money or luck that arrives suddenly and without being earned or planned for — an inheritance, a bonus, a tax refund, a lottery win. The word carries a sense of pleasant surprise, and it's frequently used in business and financial contexts to describe unexpected profits or gains.

Examples

• She used the unexpected windfall from her aunt to pay off the mortgage.
• The company reported a windfall after the new product went viral.
• Finding that old savings bond was a real windfall for our holiday plans.
• Tax cuts created a windfall for the largest oil companies that year.

Where it comes from

Originally a literal medieval term for fruit or wood blown down from trees by the wind — free to whoever found it, since it couldn't be claimed as the owner's harvest. By the 1500s the phrase had broadened figuratively to mean any piece of unexpected good fortune.

Related idioms