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Antonym for jinx

English Language & Usage Asked by Error_2646 on December 4, 2020

"Jinx" has a negative connotation for an action.

What’s the opposite, an action that had a positive consequence under the superstition?

Like "lucky charm", but that doesn’t really work.

I’m looking for a verb, similar to how you would say "The return to office date got pushed back. I shouldn’t have said I was looking forward to it, I [jinxed] it.".

"Woohoo! The return to office date got pushed back, when I said it wasn’t going to happen I [somehow positively influenced] it."

2 Answers

After clarification of the question, what's being looked for is a verb that's the antonym of jinx, and used in a superstitious context.

I believe that invoke satisfies those criteria:

[Merriam-Webster]
2 : to call forth by incantation : CONJURE

// Nietzsche is so complex that he can be invoked in support of many outlooks, some of them brutal or nihilistic.
— Thomas Nagel, New Republic, 14 Jan. 2002

// There are some people who commit murder as a way of invoking the death penalty. Capital punishment can sometimes, then, be equivalent to suicide.
— George Freeman Solomon, People, 17 Jan. 1977

Used in the example sentence in the question, and paraphrasing it slightly so that it makes sense with the word, it would look like this:

""Woohoo! The return to office date got pushed back, when I said it wasn't going to happen I invoked that result."


A similar word is evoke, but I personally feel it doesn't have quite as active a sense of summoning something real as does invoke, and instead is more commonly associated with recollection.

Google Books NGram Viewer also indicates that invoke evil spirits is about three times as common as evoke evil spirits:

invoke versus evoke evil spirits

Correct answer by Jason Bassford on December 4, 2020

Maybe "blessing" could work!

According to Oxford's English Dictionary, a blessing is "a beneficial thing for which one is grateful; something that brings well-being."

Edit, after your clarification: I’ve often heard people use the word “called” in these situations. Something happened that I said would happen? I called it!

“Woohoo! The return to office date got pushed back, when I said it wasn’t going to happen I called it.”

Although it isn’t formal English, it’s a pretty common phrase. To say you “called it” implies that you predicted it would happen.

Answered by sagibug on December 4, 2020

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