Word.ws English Dictionary

winner's curse

winner's curse noun: the phenomenon whereby the winner of an auction is likely to overpay, since each bid represents a bidder's estimate of the item's value, and one would expect the average bid to be the most accurate.

Noun

winner's curse

  1. (auctions) The phenomenon whereby the winner of an auction is likely to overpay, since each bid represents a bidder's estimate of the item's value, and one would expect the average bid to be the most accurate.

Questions about winner's curse

What does winner's curse mean?
Winner's curse means the phenomenon whereby the winner of an auction is likely to overpay, since each bid represents a bidder's estimate of the item's value, and one would expect the average bid to be the most accurate.
What part of speech is winner's curse?
Winner's curse is a noun.

Words near winner's curse in the dictionary

  1. Winnemucca
  2. winner
  3. winner take all
  4. winner takes all
  5. winner's circle
  6. winner's curse
  7. winner, winner, chicken dinner
  8. winner-take-all
  9. winner-takes-all
  10. winnerhood
  11. winnerless

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: winner's curse (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “winner's curse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/winner%27s_curse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.