#71- 13 Words for Superstitions, Bad Luck & Fate

Welcome to The Real Life English with Gabby Podcast. Have you ever felt like everything was going wrong, like maybe you had bad luck? Did you ever do something that you thought might change your luck in some way? In episode #71, we dive into the world of bad luck, fate, and superstitions. You’ll learn 13 real American idioms, slang, and phrasal verbs that will help you speak confidently about luck. You'll also hear fun examples from everyday life, talk about popular superstitions from around the world and even learn some grammar-the first conditional.

We’ll talk about expressions like knock on wood, jinx, Murphy’s Law, and when it rains, it pours and how you can use them naturally in conversation.

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• Definitions and example sentences
• Review of the First Conditional
• The full transcript
• Practice exercises that will challenge you

and more!

Click >> HERE << For the Study Guide

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Transcript

[00:00:00] On this episode of the Real Life English with Gabby podcast, I'll be teaching you 13 phrasal verbs, slang words, and idioms all about bad luck, fate, and superstitions. You'll be learning vocabulary like jinx, bad juju, knock on wood, and more. Let's get to it.

Hey there! Welcome to the Real Life English with Gabby podcast. I'm your host, Gabby, your fun and friendly English teacher from the one and only New York City. My goal is to teach you phrasal verbs, idioms, and slang that will help you speak English confidently and understand real American conversations.

Are you ready to improve your English skills? Let's jump right in.

Hey, hey, hey! Greetings from New York City. I hope that all of you are doing well. I wanna [00:01:00] apologize, firstly, about episode number 70, the Halloween episode. When I was recording, the microphone switched to the MacBook microphone from my regular Samson microphone, and so the last, I think, 10–15 minutes of the episode sound terrible.

So, my apologies. Hopefully, I can find a way to fix that. Anyway, here in New York City, things have been heating up—not the weather, but the politics. We just had Election Day this past week. A lot of crazy elections happened this week throughout the United States—everything from the race for mayor here in New York City to the race for governor in New Jersey, and other elections that will have a lot of impact in [00:02:00] Washington, D.C.

So the past few weeks here have been crazy. You may have actually seen on the news that three weeks ago we had the largest protest in our history with the “No Kings” protest. At this protest, millions of people gathered to protest President Trump and his administration. The amazing thing is that people in your countries also protested with us. Some were Americans living abroad, and others were just people around the world who were supporting Americans fighting against our current government.

If you haven't heard anything about the protest and you're interested, just look up “No Kings protest” on social media. I think it'll inspire you because it has inspired many of us here in the USA.

But enough about politics. Let's now [00:03:00] shift to this episode—episode number 71. This episode is all about bad luck, superstitions, and fate. Fate, for those of you who don't know, is very similar to destiny—destino. I know it’s destino in many languages. This is a topic that I love to talk about. I mean, honestly, there are most topics or topics that I love to talk about, but I actually use this topic all the time in my classes when I teach the first conditional. Yeah, we're gonna do a little bit of grammar in this episode.

So, the first conditional, which you might also know as the future real conditional, very often uses the topic of superstitions to teach the form. Conditionals, as most of you [00:04:00] probably know, are one of the most difficult grammar topics for English learners. It's actually a topic I love to teach. My favorite levels to teach are B1, B2, and C1.

But when it comes to B2, I have taught that level for 13 years. It's my favorite. But I've taught a lot of B1 and C1 as well. Honestly, I've taught every level. I taught A1 for two years. Conditionals—really, where you have to get to know them very well—are B2, C1, and C2.

And this is a difficult topic. I think it's number two on the list of most difficult topics in English for English learners. So when I teach conditionals, in order to make it a little bit more fun, I like to use this topic. The first conditional is the conditional that we use when we talk about something that might really happen in the future. That's [00:05:00] why it's called the future real conditional—because it's about something that has a real possibility to happen now and into the future.

Let me give you an example: If you crack a mirror, you will have bad luck for seven years. Let's use this sentence to talk about the structure of the first conditional. Firstly, we have the if clause: “If you crack a mirror.” The structure of this is if + subject + simple present tense, and then you have the object “a mirror.” But let's focus on the verb tense. So, if + subject + simple present tense (“crack”), and then we have the object “a mirror.” That’s the if clause. Then the main clause, or the result clause, [00:06:00] is the subject “you” + “will” (or another modal) + V1, which we call the base form of the verb: “you will have.” So on one side, we use if + simple present tense, and then on the second side, we have a modal + the base form. Remember, after a modal like will, you always use the base form. You never change the form of the verb. That's a rule that we never break. It's 100%—no exceptions.

Listen to these other examples of the first conditional:
 If you find a four-leaf clover, it will bring good luck.
 If you walk under a ladder, you will have bad luck.
 If a black cat crosses your path, [00:07:00] you'll have bad luck for seven years.
 If you open an umbrella in the house, you will have bad luck.

These are all examples of the first conditional. But they're also examples of superstitions. Superstitions are beliefs that certain actions, numbers, or objects can bring good or bad luck. Superstitions are basically people's way of trying to make sense of bad or good things that we can't control. Superstitions often come from tradition, fear, and sometimes even coincidence. So, you open an umbrella in your house and then all of these bad things happen to you, and so you blame the umbrella—when really, it was just a coincidence.

Some [00:08:00] people are what we call superstitious. Superstitious is the adjective form, and this means that they believe in superstitions. So superstition is a noun, superstitious is an adjective. Some people are superstitious—they believe that these superstitions are real. Other people are not. They think it's just fun, it’s just nonsense, it's not real. Whether or not you believe in them, superstitions are everywhere, and they tell us a lot about a culture—but they also tell us a lot about human psychology, which is why I love talking about this subject.

In American culture, some common superstitions include knocking on wood to avoid bad luck after saying something good. For [00:09:00] example, if someone says, “How are you? How is your family?” and you say, “Oh, everyone's doing well, everyone's healthy—knock on wood,” because you don't want to bring bad luck by saying something good.

We also have something called crossing our fingers. So, “I hope I pass the test”—you cross your fingers to bring good luck. And one of the most popular superstitions that Americans have is avoiding the number 13, especially Friday the 13th, which is a very unlucky day. We'll get to that more later.

As you know, countries around the world have different beliefs, and because of this, I love having my students share common superstitions in their cultures. The way that I teach the first conditional is, first I teach the grammar, then we practice, but then we look at the grammar by looking at this [00:10:00] worksheet that has really popular superstitions from the United States. Then I have the students each give three or four common superstitions from their cultures, and they discuss them—because naturally, like I said, when you talk about superstitions, you use the first conditional.

I love this because it gets students learning grammar, but also talking about their cultures. In Italy, for example, it's bad luck to celebrate your birthday before the date you were born.

So, I talked a little bit about this in the birthday episode that we did about birthdays and celebrations. I remember that my birthday was on Sunday, and some of my students wanted to celebrate my birthday on the previous Friday. They wanted to bring a cake and have a little party for me, and they were like, “No, Gabby, you can't! It's bad luck—you can't celebrate your birthday until your actual birthday,” which for Americans is crazy because we celebrate our birthdays the whole month long. But this is [00:11:00] just an example of a superstition in Italy.

In many countries, it's bad luck to open an umbrella inside, or if a black cat crosses your path, it means bad luck or it means death is near. Now, let's talk about bad luck numbers. My South Korean students always share that in South Korea, four is a bad luck number because it sounds like the word “death.” So, in many buildings, they don't have a fourth floor.

In Kenya, on the other hand, the number 10 is unlucky. I'm sure that you've seen in the media that 13 is very unlucky here in the USA. This is real. This is not made up by the media. This is actually a real thing. If you fly with an American airline, oftentimes [00:12:00] there will be no 13th row. Some American airlines have changed this, but many of them will skip the 13th row—or people don't wanna book the 13th row because they're superstitious.

Friday the 13th is a very unlucky day. Statistically speaking, Friday the 13th always has a higher rate of crime. Thirteen overall is just a very bad number.

However, to people who aren't superstitious, 13 is no big deal. Some of our most popular athletes, for example, have chosen the number 13 to put on their jerseys. And I chose 13 vocabulary words and expressions just for fun for this episode because I thought it would work well.

Some Americans are superstitious, some are not. But even though there are a lot of Americans who are not superstitious, this is still a really important topic.

[00:13:00] So, are you superstitious? I don't think personally that I'm that superstitious, but I think that even for people who are not superstitious, they do believe maybe one or two things, like the number 13, right? Like, I'm not sure that I would fly on Friday the 13th, to be honest. But I'm sure everyone here knows someone who's extremely superstitious. And you know who's really superstitious? Athletes, for example. If someone's team got into the playoffs and they have a lot of facial hair, they won't shave until it's done. Or they'll wear the same socks or they'll do the same traditions. If you know Rafa Nadal from Spain, retired tennis player—my favorite, actually—he was very superstitious about how many times he bounced the ball before serving or how he drank water. Many athletes are superstitious.

So, whether or not you are [00:14:00] superstitious, this is still a really important topic because it's often a part of our everyday conversation. For Americans, for example, even the ones who are not superstitious, you might hear them say, “Oh, don’t jinx it,” or “Knock on wood,” randomly in conversations—and you'll hear more about this in the story.

So if you hear this in conversation and you don't know what they mean, it can be confusing because you’re saying, “Why is someone knocking on wood?” Talking about superstitions helps you understand a lot of cultural references and idioms, and it's often how people express hope, fear, and even belief in daily life.

So by the end of this episode, my goal is that you'll be able to talk about superstitions and your beliefs in English, and more easily understand when native speakers talk about them.

Before we move on, I just wanna tell you that there is a free study guide waiting for you that [00:15:00] will help you practice everything that you learn in this episode. The key to speaking English confidently and naturally is through repetition and practice.

The study guide will help you do just that because it has all of the words, definitions, and example sentences that you heard in the episode, plus it has the transcript and, most importantly, practice activities that will challenge you to use what you heard. To get the study guide, click the link in the episode description.

Now, let's take a look at the vocabulary that you're gonna be learning in this episode: The luck of the draw, jinx, to tempt fate, to seal your fate, run into bad luck or have a stroke of bad luck, Murphy's Law, when it rains, it pours, bad vibes, to be down on your luck or run out of luck, a hex, bad juju, doomed, and to play the hand you're dealt.

Now let's get to the story. If you are a regular listener, you already know what to do—but if you're new, let me explain how the rest of the episode is going to work. I created a story that has all of the vocabulary in real-life context. While I read, see if you can use the context clues to guess the meaning of the vocabulary. Afterward, we'll talk about all of the vocabulary, and we'll see how well you did at guessing the meaning.

Here we go.

You know how some [00:17:00] people just seem to have it all? That was my friend Mario. He was one of those people who could walk into a room and everything would just work out for him—things like getting promotions at work, winning raffles and competitions, always finding a parking spot, and even finding money randomly on the floor. It was as though he was born under a lucky star. He was popular everywhere he went.

Mario wasn't the superstitious type at all. He and I were opposites when it came to superstitions, and he would always laugh at me when I said things like “Knock on wood,” or when I got scared after doing something unlucky. He did believe in the luck of the draw, but he didn't believe that our [00:18:00] actions could jinx us. But one Friday morning, everything changed. We were running back to work after lunch, and since we were a few minutes late for a staff meeting, we were trying to get there as quickly as possible. So we decided to cut through a construction site to save some time, but in order to do so, we had to walk underneath a huge ladder.

I told him not to do it because it was unlucky. I yelled out, “Don’t tempt fate, Mario!” but he just laughed and said, “Relax, Gabby, I’ll be fine.” I walked around the ladder out of fear, but he walked right underneath it. It was at that moment that his fate was sealed. Moments after he stepped out from under the [00:19:00] ladder, his phone fell into a puddle.

Then, when we got to work, he realized that he had lost a hundred dollars that was in his pocket. When he left work, he discovered that his car wouldn’t start. The next day at work, he messed up his presentation and spilled coffee on our boss.

I told him he was having a string of bad luck because of the ladder, but he claimed it was just Murphy’s Law—when it rains, it pours, right? Everyone at work said they felt bad vibes all day long. A few days later, things got even worse. His dog got sick, his apartment flooded, and then he lost a big client at work. He was really down on his [00:20:00] luck and said, “Maybe you’re right. I think the universe put a hex on me because I’ve got some seriously bad juju following me around.”

From that day on, he started to believe that he was jinxed. For the first time in his life, he caught himself crossing his fingers at random moments, like when he had to give a presentation or call a client. And when something went wrong, he would immediately knock on wood. After weeks of other disasters, Mario sighed and said, “I think I’m doomed. My good luck will never come back again.”

I told him, “Look, Mario, you know I’m superstitious, but I also believe that thinking you’re doomed makes bad things happen to you. [00:21:00] Sometimes you’ve gotta play the hand you’re dealt and change your own luck. So don’t give up hope.”

He laughed and said, “You know what? You’re right. I’m gonna try to be more positive, but I’ll tell you what—next time I see a ladder, I’m walking the other way.” The end.

All right, now let’s take a look at the definitions and example sentences.

First up, we have the idiom the luck of the draw. This is something that happens purely by chance. You have no control over the outcome. For example, sometimes you get the best seat, sometimes you get the worst seat—it’s just the luck of the draw.

This expression comes from the world of [00:22:00] card games, where players draw cards or take cards from the deck. Let’s break a few things down. To draw a card means to take a card from a deck. The deck of cards is the pile of cards. Okay, so when you draw a card from a deck, we call that your hand.

The hand that you get depends 100% on luck or chance. And so that’s where this idiom comes from—because it’s just like life. What happens to you happens entirely by chance, and we can’t determine it. So it’s the luck of the draw.

Next up, we have the word jinx. This is a really popular word here. Jinx can be a noun [00:23:00]—a jinx—or a verb, to jinx. As a noun, it means a person or thing that brings bad luck. For example, “Every time I wear that jersey, my team loses. I must be a jinx.” As a verb, it means to cause bad luck to happen. For example, “Work is going really great right now, but I don’t want to jinx it.”

The concept of a jinx is very old in American culture. I looked up the history of this word, and it comes from a bird that was called a “jinx.” It was used in a lot of magical spells, and so Americans began to use it to describe something that brought bad luck—especially in sports. It’s very interesting when you look up the history of English.

[00:24:00] Next up, we have the expression to tempt fate. As we talked about earlier in the podcast, fate means destiny. So, to tempt fate is when you take some kind of unnecessary risk or you do something that might cause bad luck. You might say, “Why are you testing fate? Just leave things alone.” For example, “He drove through the storm without caring—he was really tempting fate.”

Next up, we have the idiom to seal your fate. To seal means to close. So, to seal your fate is when you do something that makes a certain result definite or inevitable. [00:25:00] For example, “When she lied to her boss, she sealed her fate and lost her job.”

Next up, we have the idiom to run into bad luck or have a stroke of bad luck or a string of bad luck. This is when you suddenly experience a period of bad luck or misfortune—so, bad luck, bad luck, bad luck, bad luck—happens in a row. For example, “We ran into bad luck when our car broke down in the middle of nowhere.” “He’s had a string of bad luck for the past three months.”

Next up, we have Murphy’s Law. This is the idea that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. If the opportunity is there, it’s going to happen. We say this all the time. [00:26:00] After bad things happen, we say, “Well, Murphy’s Law.” For example, “It started to rain, my car stopped working, and I missed the concert. Murphy’s Law, I guess.”

This expression might seem a little strange, but it’s named after someone—his name was Edward Murphy. He was an engineer, and he did safety tests. When a device failed, he would say, “If anything can go wrong, it will,” and this spread and became Murphy’s Law.

Next up, we have the idiom When it rains, it pours. If you go way back to the beginning of my podcast when I did my Spring and Storms episode, we talked a little bit about the word pour. To pour is when it rains heavily—“Wow, it’s pouring outside.”

[00:27:00] When it rains, it pours means that bad things often happen all at once, not just one at a time. For example, “First I lost my keys, then I missed my bus, then I was late to work and got in trouble with my boss—when it rains, it pours.”

Next up, we have bad vibes. Vibes is the word we use to talk about energy and feelings. Like, “Wow, there are really good vibes in here. I’m feeling a lot of positive things, positive energy.” Bad vibes are the opposite. These are negative feelings or negative energy coming from a person, a place, or a situation.

Next up, we have to be down on your luck or to run out of luck. Run out of, as you’ve heard in previous episodes, means [00:28:00] to finish the supply of something. So, “Oh no, I ran out of coffee. I need to go buy more.” To run out of luck or be down on your luck is when you’re going through a difficult time—you have no good luck left. Typically, this has to do with money or opportunities. For example, “He’s been down on his luck since he lost his job a few months ago.”

Next up, we have a hex. A hex is a magic spell or a curse that brings bad luck to someone. For example, “They say that an old woman put a hex on their house.”

Next up, we have the slang expression bad juju. Bad juju is bad spiritual energy or a feeling that something [00:29:00] unlucky is going to happen. Sometimes it can be connected to a place or an item—like you go into a house and it’s like, “Ooh, there’s bad juju in here.” For example, “Don’t take that necklace, it’s got bad juju.”

For example, imagine that you have a family member who was a criminal or someone who had something tragic happen to them, and you get a piece of jewelry that belonged to them. People may say, “Don’t take that necklace—it’s got bad juju.”

Next up, we have the word doomed. Doomed means destined to fail or destined to have a bad outcome no matter what happens—no matter how hard this person tries. We use this a lot for [00:30:00] relationships. For example, “Their relationship was doomed from the start—we all knew they wouldn’t last.”

And lastly, we have the idiom to play the hand you’re dealt. Now, earlier we talked about the hand. The hand is the cards that you pick, right? To deal cards is to give out cards. So imagine that you’re playing poker and you get a terrible hand—you get terrible cards. But we say, “Okay, well, I’ve gotta play the hand I’m dealt.” This means to accept and make the best of a situation that you can’t control. Usually, it’s negative—so something bad happens to you, and you have to accept it and deal with it the best you can.

Well, guess what? You just learned [00:31:00] 13 phrasal verbs, slang words, and idioms all about bad luck and superstitions. If you want to remember everything that you just learned so that you can use it to speak English confidently, here’s what you’ve gotta do:

For homework, I’m going to give you two main tasks. The first task is to download the study guide, as I reminded you earlier in the episode. Once you get the study guide, you’re going to take a look at the 13 vocabulary words and expressions from the episode and pick five that you are going to use within the next three days.

You can use them in a multitude of ways. You can record yourself in an audio message creating sentences. You can create a dialogue. You can write an email or a text, or you can even [00:32:00] teach someone who wants to learn English—because when you teach something, you’re more likely to remember it. Whatever way you decide to practice, just make sure that you are consistent and that you spend some time repeating what you learned in the episode.

Well, that’s a wrap for today’s episode of The Real Life English with Gabby podcast. Be sure to download today’s study guide so that you can learn how to use this vocabulary confidently. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe for more weekly adventures in English learning. Also, I’d love to hear from you—so please leave me a review.

Thanks so much for tuning in.