fateful
[feyt-fuh l]
- having momentous significance or consequences; decisively important; portentous: a fateful meeting between the leaders of the two countries.
- fatal, deadly, or disastrous.
- controlled or determined by destiny; inexorable.
- prophetic; ominous.
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Origin of fateful
Synonyms
See more synonyms for fateful on Thesaurus.com1, 4. See ominous.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for fatefully
Contemporary Examples
Fatefully, Wilson did not insist that American business stay neutral in deed.
Perhaps most fatefully, gone was any explicit pledge to formalize the agreement as a binding treaty next year.
But Pandit had many enablers for this fatefully wrong-headed decision: his board of directors.
Historical Examples
They have a feel of fatally shutting down, fatefully closing in.
I, Mary MacLaneMary MacLane
We pushed on past sentinels, motionless, silent, fatefully awake.
With the French in France and SalonikaRichard Harding Davis
No service is done to an author like Stevenson by fatefully praising him for precisely the wrong thing.
Robert Louis StevensonAlexander H. Japp
It was as if half a century of past time had fatefully for moments turned back.
Fresh FieldsJohn Burroughs
Rufus continued heavily, fatefully, gathering force with every word, as a loosened rock beginning to roll down a mountain side.
The Tidal Wave and Other StoriesEthel May Dell
fateful
- having important consequences; decisively important
- bringing death or disaster
- controlled by or as if by fate
- prophetic
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for fatefully
fateful
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper