That’s exactly how I felt yesterday, tackling the mix of snow, ice pellets, and freezing drizzle that landed on us overnight.
I have to say we lucked out - getting dumped on aside - because our precip was all powder. Great for skiing, but rubbish for snowballs. Makes the roads “greasy”, too. If it had been only an inch or so you could’ve used a broom on it, but we had a lot more than that. The official measure for Mpls was 13 inches, but since most of it was blowing sideways it’s hard to be accurate, so I think they just threw up their hands and took a wild if modest stab at it; judging by my car I’d say we had more, easily. Snowblowers were firing that stuff a mile - a sight to behold - and shoveling was a comparative breeze, but even so, looks like the little kid’s gotta get a bit bigger yet.
I never understood that expression. What does it mean?
It means that things went well due to luck.
Apologies, Ben. I knew it was a purely Left Pond idiom, but I assumed context would make everything clear.
Yeah, it’s like “got lucky” without the spicy element. It also implies narrowly evading a negative outcome, often without any intent on the subject’s part. It’s like that fellow in the news who nonchalantly got out of his car, and right then a massive falling boulder crushed it. As we would say, he definitely lucked out. It can also be used diffidently, in response to congratulations on a success: “Ah, I just lucked out, that’s all.” You want to be pretty careful of telling someone else they lucked out, though: it could be taken as a denigration, for as we see, it can easily imply that an achievement was undeserved. The phrase’s construction suggests to me that luck got one out of what could have been an undesirable situation. In the interests of brevity we use a noun here as a verb, and there you are.
Originally, though - WWII, I believe - the meaning was the exact opposite: one’s luck had run out. Somehow it got turned around at least by the time I was young, and this more auspicious colloquial usage has consistently been the only one I’ve ever encountered for the phrase as it exists now. Maybe it’ll change back again some day.
I think that’s why I’ve always struggled with the phrase whenever I hear it (exclusively, of course, from Americans). It sounds as if it should mean the opposite to what you mean by it. I suppose it’s not a surprise that, in fact, it did mean the opposite at one time. Maybe it’s a bit like the awful current trend of Americans saying, “I could care less,” when they mean the opposite.
I don’t think so. “I could care less” is just plain structurally confused because it doesn’t support its intended meaning, and is therefore clearly grammatically wrong; whereas we see that “lucked out” can be open to interpretation, apparently has been, and I think my interpretation of the modern usage is quite sound, otherwise it would have no meaning for me, and I couldn’t support it. Trust me, it’s been the Yank meaning for a good while, no question, and in an earlier time it would have been considered “men’s speech”. It isn’t dissonant in our “dialect”, if you will, and that isn’t due to being thickwitted; all vernacular is parochial. Now if instead you meant that as with “could care less”, mere carelessness might also have caused the change in “lucked out”, I’m in no position to know, but the difference is that where one subjectively works (to Yank ears), the other objectively doesn’t (by its illogic). Arguments to the contrary acknowledged. But there are many formations where “- out” idiomatically propels the meaning, yet there don’t seem to be any rules for its direction: for example, to cash out doesn’t mean you run out of money, but you convert assets to money, as when withdrawing from a gambling game (by extension it can also mean someone has died); if something is tricked out, it’s not that it was tricked or ran out of tricks, but that the bling, bells and whistles were not spared. “Chill out” doesn’t mean one has lost one’s cool, but that one relaxes. If an outdoor event is rained out, it means a cancellation due to rains, not that the rains have ceased. If a spot is hunted out, it means there is no game left, but we can also hunt something out in the sense of a search; however, if something is farmed out, it doesn’t mean the soil is depleted as one might think, but - and this is far afield, no pun intended - it’s when a job is assigned to auxiliary sources. Agriculture would only be incidental here, and not implied. The first meaning would be considered uninformed, but it draws on a class of like idioms that are really useful when one reaches one’s limit: if I’ve had enough coffee I would say I’m coffeed out, or if I’m tired of playing frisbee, I’m frisbeed out. When I went to the Carlsbad Caverns the experience was so overwhelming that in the end the grandeur ceased to impress anymore, and I said - and still say - that I was caved out. The possibilities are not endless, but close to it. These would parallel the WWII meaning of “lucked out”. Today’s meaning for that one, though, isn’t wrong; it’s just through a lens that the idiom’s form has allowed. Let us remember that “egregious” was once a compliment. The “- out” forms appear inherently elastic, and it’s only custom, not logic, that keeps their meanings intact. We’ve seen that many of these outwardly similar-seeming examples are actually viewed through different and even contrasting lenses, not simply the same one for all, for their bones don’t have enough meat to sustain - much less justify - a grammar-driven approach; after all, where do we start? In any case, that horse has long left the barn. It’s the poetry of Yanklish. Our shibboleth. For me there’s nothing outrageous about this state of affairs, but you do need familiarity for any of it to make sense, because from your angle, my Right Pond friends, I suspect none of it does!
I must admit, even after you and oleorezinator have explained it to me, I’m still always going to struggle to remember which way I’m supposed to interpret “lucked out”. Ah well. Thank you both for trying.
Just so you know what MY meaning is, and that “ran out of luck” is not it. Ever. I try not to be too free with the idioms, but every now and then things like this happen. Yet I welcome these opportunities, because they force me to make sense of my own vernacular. 
What is the function of “out”, here? In most cases it’s a figurative intensifier of sorts, but that’s not all of it. Where’s a philologist when you need one?
Here, too, “lucked out” would refer to achieving a fortunate outcome. I would say it could apply to both avoiding an unwanted outcome, like not getting the freezing rain that was forecast, or achieving a wanted outcome, like scoring tickets to see a coveted artist in concert.
I suspected the US shared this with Canada. Normally we don’t even think about it; it’s just part of how we frame the world.
One more thing, and then I promise I’ll stop wittering: ‘luck’ isn’t a verb.
Yes, of course. But in vernacular, it’s used as if it were. English is flexible that way, and both sides of the Anglospheric Pond do this verbing-of-nouns thing; it’s just that when we come up against a curiosity that we call it wrong out of reflex. It didn’t get called North American English for nothing. 
Here’s a common one you’ll hear in the States: “Beer me.” If Canada doesn’t have this one, I’d be dead surprised. 
As they taught at IBM, any noun can be verbed.
Actually, that isn’t one I’ve heard before. That doesn’t mean it isn’t in circulation here.
In retrospect, “common” wasn’t the best choice of words for the US, either; but neither ought anyone in the States be flummoxed by “Beer me,” even if it’s their first time hearing it. Of course it means “Give me beer,” in a friendly way; from my end that’s the only translation available. It’s often met with a chuckle. I’ve used the bon mot, friends have used it, I’ve heard complete strangers use it. It’s not necessarily an everyday thing, but it’s out there.
In a local newspaper there used to be a weekly opinion column, “The Verbing of America” (I acknowledge it to be thought a presumptuous title from some angles, but that is another discussion), where the latest ferreted-out crossovers were held up for vilification, approval, or a meh. IIRC - it was a while back - most contributors were prescriptivists throwing ashes on their heads and rending their garments, but good cases were made from time to time. I’ll admit there are some examples I still have a deep aversion to: “impact” as a verb would be a big one, but somehow I’m okay with it in a dental context. I can’t win.
I can kind of get that. Here, where things are, arguably, simpler, it would probably be a challenge: “Go on then! Throw your beer on my head and try to glass me in the face with your glass! I promise you, I’ll get you first!”
Something friendly along those lines …
I don’t like nouns as verbs at all.
Interestingly, I think you’re wrong about the word ‘impact’. At least according to Chambers, that one started out as a verb and has become a noun. It comes from the Latin verb participle ‘impactus’, and came into English first as a verb. Or so I’m led to believe.
Sorry, a bit late with the … out constructs, but think it is something where a verbed noun would often be understood in context - even if the grammatically minded were offended.
Most people are familiar with ‘worn out’ and ‘tired out’. At the end of a day focused one thing I have often heard people say they were out in the sense of no longe being able to concentrate on or absorb any more about . Listeners understood what they meant by the construct in that context.
If at the end of a period where a number of things could of gone either way but none of them went the way someone wanted they said “I think I am lucked out” would people like Nano understand it even though it’s the opposite of their normal usage?
As far as “I could care less” goes, I have heard it in a longer phrase "“I could care less, but it’s not worth the effort”, so both versions imply indifference, but from different directions. Since tone of voice is relied upon to “finish” the thought, it doesn’t translate well to print for those who haven’t heard it spoken.
It’s similar to “Bless your heart”, a common phrase here in the Southeast US. The two possible meanings are conveyed by tone of voice. It doesn’t help that often both sentiments are rolled up together in varying proportions. 
dave boling
I’m not so sure about “simpler”. On my end that’s definitely a complication.
See, for me they’re playful. But it can’t be done willy-nilly; the only way I would say “Glass me” is if I were offered the choice between a mug or a glass, say. More probably I would say, “A glass, please.” “Beer me” is quite different: it says, “I’m here for beer, so just slather me in it and pour it down my happy gullet as I joyfully wallow in beerness.” Again, put simply, “Beer me” means “Give me beer”. That’s it. So too, in varying degrees of success, with any number of commodities (at the garden shop: “Pesticide or ladybugs?” “Ladybug me.”), and off the top of my head I can’t think of any alternative meanings for the form other than as in “Google me”, because Googling is not a giving but an extraction, and no one can give you what already figuratively owns you, anyway.
Both sides of the Pond use “pen” and “chair” as verbs, so from my end, there’s nothing untoward in extending the device, but as I said, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. “Glass” as a verb in the midst of a bar spat is so unlikely as to be downright strange. In the extremely unlikely event I were to strike someone with a glass, I wouldn’t say I glassed them; the phrase would only work if hitting people with a glass were so customary as to be expected. When embroiled in the heat of conflict, we tend away from flights of editorial fancy, for there’s business afoot. And I can tell you I wouldn’t threaten; as a practical matter, I don’t believe in broadcasting my tactical plans. The only warning they need is to back off. “Back off”: there’s another one. See, that’s one of the things I love about English: so much of it is double-duty and stretchy, and most of the time we don’t even realize we’re doing it. It makes for a lively tongue.
As you might guess, de-escalation is my preferred strategy. Peace, dude.
“Glass” as a verb is more likely in the case of spaces, such as a conservatory: “No worries about the weather; it’s all glassed in.” IOW, the space is entirely enclosed by glass, and staunch enough for shelter. Not only is “glass” verbed, but adding to the outrage, “in” works as an adverb, just as in “worn out”. Talk about stretchy.
I had a raconteur friend who, given a choice of meats for his order, said to the server, “Pork me.” His wife was not amused. It was the 80s, by the way.
I never would have guessed. Fascinating, this ebb and flow we ride on - mainly unbeknownst - in our language.
I would understand it indeed; here I understood it right away, and found myself pleasantly surprised. I’d never considered this detail before, but for me, the “am” changes everything, so that “I’m lucked out” and “I lucked out” have completely opposite meanings. Totally makes no sense, I’m sure.
Now the formation is redeemed and makes grammatic sense, but that’s the only way it can work for me, for without the explaining bit, it’s a non-starter. Can’t say as I’ve ever heard the longer version before, and TBH the sentiment’s not one I would ever entertain (that’s the basis of Ben’s and my objection to it: How - and why - could one be able to care less about something for which one already cares nothing at all, really?), but I get it, so far as it goes. Still not going to use it, though: When I care nothing for something, there’s no further to go.