noun
-
evil fortune; bad luck
-
an unfortunate or disastrous event; calamity
Synonym Usage
See affliction.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of misfortune
Explanation
On a gloomy day, you may feel compelled to list your misfortunes: a broken umbrella, a broken heart, a broken toe. Misfortune means bad luck or the state of having bad luck. Break misfortune into its parts and you get mis- meaning bad and fortune meaning chance or luck. Sometimes it can feel like misfortune follows you. Picture it as a gloomy psychic named "Miss Fortune" who can only see the bad things in your future.
Vocabulary lists containing misfortune
Power Prefix: mis-
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"The Experiment" and "Superstition"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
If Wendy Wasserstein wrote a worse play than “An American Daughter,” I hope I never have the misfortune of seeing it.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026
"He was a star... He had chosen the spotlight," Ditum argued, acknowledging that his story had the "misfortune" to break in the middle of a summer news vacuum.
From Barron's ● Aug. 19, 2026
"The most effective and relentless lobbyist that it has been my misfortune to encounter during the last two decades," according to ex-minister Sir Oliver Letwin.
From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2026
At the time of her misfortune, I was book editor of the Los Angeles Times.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2026
Pretty Boy was singing away in my room right now, so I was pretty sure he had lived through whatever misfortune had befallen him.
From "The Lions of Little Rock" by Kristin Levine
Back pain, difficult childbirth, dental crowding and sinus infections are not random misfortunes.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 11, 2026
Russell, 28, cut a forlorn figure afterwards as he contemplated the series of misfortunes that have derailed his season.
From BBC ● Jun. 7, 2026
When manager Arne Slot and Liverpool look back at this season, a crazy January afternoon when they drew 2-2 at Fulham will go a long way to summing up their misfortunes.
From BBC ● Jan. 4, 2026
Despite all of her misfortunes, self-inflicted or otherwise, Allen held her head high, beating the notoriously brutal British tabloids at their own game — or, at the very least, becoming a formative opponent.
From Salon ● Oct. 29, 2025
The first is the probability of not being afflicted with any of a variety of diseases, accidents, or other misfortunes.
From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
