adventure
Americannoun
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adventures
plural
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an exciting or very unusual experience.
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participation in exciting undertakings or enterprises.
the spirit of adventure.
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a bold, usually risky undertaking; hazardous action of uncertain outcome.
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a commercial or financial speculation of any kind; venture.
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Obsolete.
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peril; danger; risk.
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chance; fortune; luck.
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verb (used with object)
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to risk or hazard.
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to take the chance of; dare.
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to venture to say or utter.
to adventure an opinion.
verb (used without object)
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to take the risk involved.
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to venture; hazard.
noun
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a risky undertaking of unknown outcome
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an exciting or unexpected event or course of events
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a hazardous financial operation; commercial speculation
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obsolete
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danger or misadventure
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chance
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verb
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to take a risk or put at risk
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to dare to go or enter (into a place, dangerous activity, etc)
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to dare to say (something)
he adventured his opinion
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of adventure
First recorded in 1200–50; Middle English aventure, from Anglo-French, Old French, from Vulgar Latin adventūra (unrecorded) “what must happen,” feminine (originally neuter plural) of Latin adventūrus future participle of advenīre “to arrive”; ad- ad- replacing a- a- 5; see advent, -ure
Explanation
An adventure is an exciting and probably risky trip, effort, or undertaking. Let's go explore the jungle! Don't be scared — it'll be an adventure! To a kid from the city, a ride on the subway is just another trip across town. To a kid from the suburbs, though, it can be a real adventure — a trip to a strange place with all sorts of strange people, new sights, and surprising twists and turns. If you've ever been to the Great Adventure amusement park, you know that the whole place is designed to make you feel as though you're on a wild, exciting, and thrilling trip — a great adventure. People often go on an adventure hoping something wonderful will come of it.
Vocabulary lists containing adventure
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Introduction to Fiction
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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:
She was a naïve 19-year-old, she recalls, living in a shared east London terrace and looking for adventure.
From BBC ● Oct. 21, 2026
A major surgery inspires a mother-son adventure through Iceland’s remote Westfjords, where winding roads, thundering waterfalls and uneven hiking trails offer both travelers a test.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2026
The demo shown to journalists, covering the opening hour and a later section of the adventure, unfolded much as it did in the 1998 original.
From Barron's ● Oct. 15, 2026
Before getting into the details of these fatuous claims, a few words of background on Trump’s Venezuelan adventure are warranted.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026
It took Duane a few weeks to recover from his adventure.
From "The Very, Very Far North" by Dan Bar-el
Then go back to looking at those beachfront condos with beautiful views and trendy historic lofts, all the while dreaming about your future adventures.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 16, 2026
Apart from the turtle story, which made it into the episode “Field Trip,” very few of Arnold’s adventures were directly borrowed from Bartlett’s life.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026
The novel tells the story of a teacher who flees gang violence in Haiti and his adventures before he finally makes it to Canada, where he re-discovers "the right to breathe without fear".
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2026
Among his students was Joshua Boger, a skeptical 19-year-old captivated by Tishler’s scientific adventures.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
No one was eager to hear of my adventures, which were every bit as exciting as anybody else’s.
From "Secrets at Sea" by Richard Peck
Bruce: We were as basic as we could be, talking about something we’ve never fully adventured into, and rightly so.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 27, 2024
“That’s precisely why I had Emet-Selch take on the role of chiding like, ‘What’s with that lonely look, as though you know and have adventured through everything there is to see in the world?
From The Verge ● Apr. 29, 2022
On the one hand, he tells us, the annals are haunted by “those who almost adventured, who almost achieved, but ultimately, for them, it proved to be too much.”
From New York Times ● Feb. 2, 2022
As I look back at my vanlife adventure, it blows my mind that I’ve adventured more during the first year of my 30s than almost all 29 years before.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 8, 2019
George Marston, the official artist of the expedition, had adventured in the Antarctic with Shackleton, too.
From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong
That’s largely because we’ve been adventuring together since we were 7 years old.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026
In “Delicious in Dungeon,” a ragtag adventuring crew makes hot pot out of man-eating mushrooms.
From Salon ● May 12, 2025
During the day, when you aren’t out adventuring, you can find a shady spot beneath a towering ponderosa pine or cedar tree.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2024
Jones, an adventuring archaeologist, is seen with the hat early on in the movie where he and his companions jump from a crashing plane in an inflatable raft.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 2024
“Stay here while the rest of you go adventuring? Not a chance!”
From "Hollow City" by Ransom Riggs
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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.
