Meaning
An unexpected gain or piece of good fortune, especially a sudden sum of money the recipient did nothing to earn - an inheritance, lottery prize, legal settlement, or unforecast profit. The word keeps an older literal sense: fruit or timber blown down by the wind, free for anyone to gather. Now overwhelmingly financial in tone (windfall gains, windfall tax), but the literal orchard sense survives in windfall apples. Do not present the Norman forest-law story as fact; it is folklore. Regional use: All English-speaking countries.
Origin
Middle English windfal - Etymonline glosses the mid-15th-century sense as 'that which has been blown down by the wind', originally wood or fruit brought to the ground by natural agency 'and thus free to all'. Wiktionary records the Middle English forms windfal and wyndfall, cognate with Middle High German wintfal. The figurative sense of an unexpected acquisition is recorded from the 1540s, and an early example is Nicholas Udall's 1564 translation of Erasmus, 'a good wyndefal of inheritaunce'. The literal orchard sense survives in windfall apples. The popular story that a William-the-Conqueror statute let peasants keep windthrown timber is folklore: no etymological dictionary cites any Norman statute, and the word is unrecorded until roughly 400 years after the Conquest. The compound windfall tax was apparently coined by the economist A. C. Pigou in a letter to The Times of 2 July 1909; windfall profits and windfall gains became common in the early 20th century.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- windfall gains
- windfall profits
- windfall tax
Usage Examples
- The cousins had all but forgotten the lakeside cottage until a lawyer's letter turned it into an unexpected windfall.
- Ministers argued that a windfall tax on the energy companies would claw back profits they had done nothing to earn.
- After the gale, the orchard lanes were covered in windfall apples, free for anyone with a basket.