the gods smile on someone

English

Alternative forms

• the gods smile upon someone, the gods smile down on someone, the gods smile down upon someone

Phrase

the gods smile on someone

1. (idiomatic) Someone experiences good fortune, success, or well-being.
   • 2010 June 10, Lawrence Donegan, “Graeme McDowell stays strong to take US Open title”, in The Guardian‎:

     Yet if [Dustin] Johnson's day was misery complete, then [Graeme] McDowell's was the very essence of joy. "I just can't explain how I feel right now. I said before the round started that if the golfing gods smile on me I might win this trophy. And they did," he said afterwards.

   • 2019 October 23, Hayley Quinn, Paisley Gilmour, “An essential guide to 'zombieing' - the dating trend that's worse than ghosting”, in Cosmopolitan‎:

     "A month later, he reappeared. ‘Hey! How are you? Sorry about the lack of contact. That virus was nasty. Fancy that second date?’ HOORAH THE DATING GODS HAVE SMILED UPON ME, I thought. […]"

   • 2020 February 4, Matt Flegenheimer, Sydney Ember, “Waiting Years for This Night, Then Hours for an Iowa Winner”, in The New York Times‎:

     Every four years since the 1970s, the political gods have smiled upon Iowa, endowing its residents with uncommon power to set the course of national politics as the first nominating contest.

   • 2020 August 22, Robert McCrum, “For ever and a day: why we turn to Shakespeare at times of crisis”, in The Observer‎:

     As an association, we demonstrate near-Olympic sang-froid. As I write, the gods are smiling upon us, but in the past decade – not to mince words – two of our number have got divorced, one of us checked into rehab, and all of us have had distressful troubles with teenage kids.

Further reading

• “fortune/the gods etc smile on somebody” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.