A gambling game in which numbered tickets are drawn at random and prizes won by those who have tickets matching the winning numbers. A lottery is typically a government-sponsored form of gambling, and a prize may be a cash sum or goods. Lottery is also the name of a type of instant game where players purchase tickets and then reveal symbols or numbers that correspond to prizes.

The origin of lottery is unclear, but it seems to have evolved from earlier forms of gaming based on chance. Early drawings were probably organized by local towns to raise money for town fortifications, and the first state-sponsored lotteries appeared in the Low Countries in the 15th century. Lottery is a compound of Middle Dutch word lotterie “action of drawing lots,” and it may have been inspired by earlier lottery games in other languages.

Today, people buy millions of lottery tickets each week. Some economists see this as a symptom of widening economic inequality, with the poor buying into the fantasy that they can become rich by sheer luck. Whether or not this is true, lottery is a popular form of gambling because it can be cheap, fast, and simple to organize.

While lottery is a popular form of gambling, its costs should be carefully considered. For example, most people who win a lottery do not receive the advertised grand prize. Instead, they usually receive payments over time, called an annuity. This approach allows winners to invest the money and gain the benefits of compound interest, and it can protect lottery winners from spending all their winnings at once.