HAPPY-GO-LUCKY • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Happy-go-lucky

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/hˈæpi-goʊ-lˈəki/ Listen

adjective

Happy adj. (compar. happier; superl. happiest)

1.

Favored by hap, luck, or fortune; lucky; fortunate; successful; prosperous; satisfying desire; as, a happy expedient; a happy effort; a happy venture; a happy omen. "Chymists have been more happy in finding experiments than the causes of them."

2.

Experiencing the effect of favorable fortune; having the feeling arising from the consciousness of well-being or of enjoyment; enjoying good of any kind, as peace, tranquillity, comfort; contented; joyous; as, happy hours, happy thoughts. "Happy is that people, whose God is the Lord." "The learned is happy Nature to explore, The fool is happy that he knows no more."

3.

Dexterous; ready; apt; felicitous. "One gentleman is happy at a reply, another excels in a in a rejoinder."

Happy family, a collection of animals of different and hostile propensities living peaceably together in one cage. Used ironically of conventional alliances of persons who are in fact mutually repugnant.

Happy-go-lucky, trusting to hap or luck; improvident; easy-going. "Happy-go-lucky carelessness."

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Etymology of 'Happy-go-lucky'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Happy-go-lucky" Quotes from Famous Books

... never lost, and now it enabled Curtis to disregard the garish ugliness of the avenues and streets glimpsed during a quick run to the center of the town. For one thing, he realized how the mere propinquity of docks and wharves infects entire districts with the happy-go-lucky carelessness of Jack ashore; for another, he knew ...

— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... generally those who, from the standpoint of economic stability or solid moral quality, are the most variable. We staid and sober citizens are inclined to throw an aura of picturesqueness about such creatures as the Stuarts, the dissipated Virginian cavaliers, the happy-go-lucky barren artists of the Latin Quarter, the fiery touchiness of that so-called chivalry which was one of the least important features of Southern life, and so on. We staid and sober citizens generally ...

— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... have relied largely on the gratitude which this neglected province would feel for the introduction of Austrian improvements. The happy-go-lucky Venetian methods were no longer to disfigure the country. Those people were logical indeed who did not care for a government which did not care for them. No such reproach should be levelled against the Austrian Government, if he could avoid it; for in Dalmatia it would now be by the side of ...

— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... He had never known anything of what was going on in the mind of his son. He had never asked himself if the boy loved the truth—if he cared that things should stand in him on the footing of eternal reason, or if his consciousness was anything better than the wallowing of a happy-go-lucky satisfaction in being. And now he was astonished to find his boy no better than the common sort of human animal! My reader may say he was worse, for there is the stealing; but that is just the point in which I see him likest the common run ...

— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... could be so soft and happy-go-lucky, it went through her veins like an exhilaration. Nevertheless she dreamed of a valley, and wild gardens, and peace. She had a desire too for splendour—an aristocratic extravagant splendour. Wandering seemed to her like ...

— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

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