Word.ws English Dictionary

the house always wins

the house always wins proverb: in a casino, all gambling is designed so that the house (i.e. the casino owners) will always net a profit, regardless of the successes of individual patrons.

Proverb

the house always wins

  1. In a casino, all gambling is designed so that the house (i.e. the casino owners) will always net a profit, regardless of the successes of individual patrons.
    • Don't go to a casino. All their games are designed to make you lose more money than you earn, so that the house always wins.
  2. (broadly) A given system is designed to net a profit for, or benefit, some (specified or implied) people.
    • You're surprised by the high prices in the prison commissary? I'm not — the house always wins, after all.
    • The Reddit amateurs may be gloating about their victory over elite hedge funds now, but in the casino of Wall Street the house always wins, and many Redditors may be flirting with financial catastrophe.2021 February 3, Farhad Manjoo, “Can We Please Stop Talking About Stocks, Please?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  3. (broadly) In a given system or situation, over a long enough timescale, a particular (specified or implied) outcome is inevitable.
    • You know what they say about death and taxes. The house always wins.
    • ... thermodynamics has its way. The end may be a long time coming, but come it must: the odds cannot be beaten. Sooner or later, the timelessness of equilibrium sets in. In the gambling casino of nature, the house always wins.2005 November 1, Michael Munowitz, Knowing: The Nature of Physical Law, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 282

Questions about the house always wins

What does the house always wins mean?
The house always wins means in a casino, all gambling is designed so that the house (i.e. the casino owners) will always net a profit, regardless of the successes of individual patrons.
What part of speech is the house always wins?
The house always wins is a proverb.

Words near the house always wins in the dictionary

  1. The Hill
  2. The Hills
  3. the hit dog hollers
  4. The Honeysuckles
  5. the house
  6. the house always wins
  7. the house down
  8. The Hundred
  9. The Iliad
  10. the ink was not even dry
  11. the Internet never forgets

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: the house always wins (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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