These words refer to the gaining of benefit or advantage or to the promise of such an outcome. Favourable can refer to a present situation that exposes one to positive possibilities: favourable influences absent from most slum schools. More simply, the word may refer to approval: favourable reviews of the play. Most pertinent here, the word pertains to signs that suggest an advantageous result: favourable indication that the share market would recover rapidly and reach new highs.

Auspicious and propitious are restricted to this last possibility of favourable . Both suggest the foretelling of a beneficial outcome from preceding omens. Of the two, auspicious may better suggest an abundance of beneficial indications or conditions, propitious the absence of negative or deleterious ones: auspicious signs that victory would be theirs by nightfall; propitious weather that promised a calm voyage. In another context, auspicious may be used to indicate a clairvoyant telling of the future: She tended to see auspicious rather than ominous portents in her customers?tea leaves. Propitious , by contrast, is more commonly used to indicate the promise or gaining of more practical advantages: a business contract that seemed propitious to both parties.

Strictly speaking, providential is a heightening of the supernatural possibility inherent in auspicious , suggesting divine intervention to bring about a favourable outcome: They saw the breaking of the storm as a providential blessing on their mission. Often the force of the word is weakened to indicate anything that seems remarkably opportune: a providential escape from the avalanche. Lucky is a more informal synonyms for this last meaning of providential , carrying no implication in current use of any divine or supernatural intervention. The word, instead, refers to a chance occurrence that proves to be beneficial: the lucky accident by which they met. In a less precise use, the word can also refer to any positive circumstance, with less emphasis on chance: lucky to be living in a free country.

Good , of course, is the least formal and, in its generality, the least precise of these words in referring to any positive circumstance: good results in the test. It can also refer to signs that augur a beneficial outcome: a good prognosis. Fortunate may once have implied a favourable augury; more often, now, it indicates present success or good circumstances: contributions to those less fortunate than oneself. This implication even overshadows a use that relates to lucky in stressing, more formally, benefits that result form chance: a fortunate throw of the dice. One use of happy relates it to these words, suggesting advantages that result, not from chance, but from a discriminating choice of means that later events corroborate: Hiring him proved to be a happy decision. Sometimes, however, the word suggests fortuitous benefits, in which case the emphasis is on the beneficial outcome rather than, as with lucky , on the overcoming of odds: a happy accident.