Lucked in or out?

Question

Hi Kate, Deb and Izzy,

I now hear the terms “ lucked in” and “ lucked out” being used to mean the same thing. If you get lucky you can be said to have lucked in and also lucked out.
I encountered this on the Wordle website when the robot ( bot!) analyses my successful solution. If you have a lucky guess it will say that you lucked out.
How can something be both in and out but mean the same? 
PS I really enjoy your work and love your spot on Sammy J 

Thanks ,Jon

Kate's response

Thanks for your question Jon!
 
There’s currently a lot of confusion around 'lucked out'. I use the expression, as you do, with the older meaning ‘be lucky’, but most of my students (and younger speakers generally) understand the opposite meaning ‘be unlucky’. So it's currently a contranym. The driver is probably the expression luck running out (or shit outta luck). But also words to do with luck  typically deteriorate — as happened with 'put the mozz on something'. OZ mozz (from Hebrew mazzal ‘luck’) shows a similar shift from ‘luck’ to ‘bad luck’, as in put the mozz on (something) ‘to put a jinx on something’. There is undoubtedly an interesting psychological basis to this sort of deterioration (pessimistic nature of humans?). 
 
The expression 'lucked in' is a recent arrival as far as I can tell, and it’s presumably because of the shift in meaning of lucked out.
 
Something similar is currently happening to the gorgeous word doozy. Currently there are two contradictory meanings out there — ‘remarkable, excellent’ and ‘bad’. The negative sense will win out — it always does.