fortuitous
Americanadjective
-
happening or produced by chance; accidental.
a fortuitous encounter.
- Synonyms:
- incidental
-
a series of fortuitous events that advanced her career.
adjective
Commonly Confused
Fortuitous has developed in sense from “happening by chance” to “happening by lucky chance” to simply “lucky, fortunate.” This development was probably influenced by the similarity of fortuitous to fortunate and perhaps to felicitous : A fortuitous late-night snowfall made for a day of great skiing. Many object to the use of fortuitous to mean simply “fortunate” and insist that it should be limited to its original sense of “accidental.” In modern standard use, however, fortuitous almost always carries the senses both of accident or chance and luck or fortune. It is infrequently used in its sense of “accidental” without the suggestion of good luck, and even less frequently in the sense “lucky” without at least a suggestion of accident or chance: A fortuitous encounter with a former schoolmate led to a new and successful career for the artist.
Related Words
See accidental.
Other Word Forms
- fortuitously adverb
- fortuitousness noun
- nonfortuitous adjective
- nonfortuitously adverb
- nonfortuitousness noun
- unfortuitous adjective
- unfortuitously adverb
- unfortuitousness noun
Etymology
Origin of fortuitous
First recorded in 1645–55; from Latin fortuitus, fortuītus, equivalent to fortu- (u-stem base, otherwise unattested, akin to fors, genitive fortis “chance, luck”) + -itus, -ītus adjective suffix (for formation gratuitous ); -ous
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.
The Bills’ strong season this year has been “pretty fortuitous,” she added.
From Los Angeles Times
To her, it’s fortuitous timing so many milestones have occurred in the past 12 months.
From Los Angeles Times
“What’s fortuitous is that our own analysis, I think the Navy’s own analysis, we’re all kind of leaning in a direction that aligns with the president’s intuition,” Clark said.
After this chaotic fortnight, it's "fortuitous we are heading to conference and we can grab the mic," one insider said.
From BBC
"It was a rainy day. It wasn't very hot out," he said, explaining that the fortuitous weather helped to "keep the stink down".
From BBC
Definitions 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.
