Word.ws English Dictionary

tough luck

tough luck noun: bad luck.

Noun

tough luck (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) Bad luck.

Interjection

  1. (idiomatic) Bad luck (often an unsympathetic retort to someone who is suffering a misfortune).
    • Your car broke down? Well, tough luck, you're due at work in 15 minutes. Better run.

Synonyms of tough luck

6 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of tough luck

Questions about tough luck

What does tough luck mean?
Tough luck means bad luck.
What part of speech is tough luck?
Tough luck can be a noun or an interjection.

Words near tough luck in the dictionary

  1. tough it out
  2. tough love
  3. tough loved
  4. tough loves
  5. tough loving
  6. tough luck
  7. tough noogies
  8. tough nut
  9. tough nut to crack
  10. tough nuts
  11. tough nuts to crack

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tough luck (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-tough luck.ogg.

Cite this entry: “tough luck.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tough_luck. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.