take potluck

Idioms  

1. Come to eat whatever happens to be served; also, take one's chances. For example, You're welcome to join us for supper but you'll have to take potluck, or When the flight was canceled, passengers had to take potluck on other airlines. This idiom alludes to accepting whatever happens to be in the cooking pot. [Second half of 1700s]

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Example Sentences

Season-ticket holders buy out 85% of the house in advance, and take potluck.

From Time Magazine Archive

It was not unusual for President Oscar Osorio himself to drive up unannounced to the embassy and take potluck luncheon with the Dukes.

From Time Magazine Archive

More than 260 readers had flooded the Mirror with letters challenging Coates to take potluck at their homes, and vowing to make him eat humble pie.

From Time Magazine Archive

Every evening hundreds of disappointed latecomers must take potluck elsewhere.

From Time Magazine Archive

And eat their fill of oven-pies, While we win free and out again To take potluck beneath the sky With sun and moon and wind and rain.

From Georgian Poetry 1911-12 by Marsh, Edward Howard, Sir