fortune
Americannoun
-
fortunes
plural
-
position in life as determined by wealth.
It's not easy to make one's fortune from humble beginnings.
-
wealth or riches.
He lost a small fortune in bad investments.
-
great wealth; ample stock of money, property, and the like.
Those gems are worth a fortune.
-
chance; luck.
They each had the bad fortune to marry the wrong person.
- Synonyms:
- karma, kismet, providence, destiny, fate
-
fortunes. things that happen or are to happen to a person in their life.
Her charitable spirit stayed with her even as her fortunes changed with marriage.
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fate; lot; destiny.
Whatever my fortune may be, my faith will guide me.
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Fortune. chance personified, commonly regarded as a mythical being distributing arbitrarily or capriciously the lots of life.
Perhaps Fortune will smile on our venture.
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good luck; success; prosperity.
The family was blessed by fortune.
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Archaic. a wealthy woman; an heiress.
verb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
idioms
noun
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an amount of wealth or material prosperity, esp, when unqualified, a great amount
-
a large sum of money
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a power or force, often personalized, regarded as being responsible for human affairs; chance
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luck, esp when favourable
-
(often plural) a person's lot or destiny
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of fortune
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English, from Old French, from Latin fortūna “chance, luck, fortune,” derivative of fort- (stem of fors ) “chance”
Explanation
A fortune can be a large amount of money, and fortune is a form of fate. So you want to have the good fortune to make a fortune during your career. Fortuna was the Roman goddess of fate and luck. She was sometimes depicted with a wheel, and the random spinning of her "wheel of fortune" became a symbol for the unpredictability of fate (and, much later, the title of a popular game show). A fortune teller can look into her crystal ball or tarot cards and predict your future. But her predictions are probably about as accurate as the "prophecy" that comes inside your fortune cookie.
Vocabulary lists containing fortune
The SAT: Multiple-Meaning Words, List 7
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The New SAT: Multiple-Meaning Words
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"Macbeth" Vocabulary from Act III
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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:
Kevin O’Leary, who made a fortune in software in the 1990s, is now best known as “Mr. Wonderful” from ABC’s Emmy Award-winning “Shark Tank.”
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 7, 2026
Included in that fortune are multiple properties: the remaining New York City townhouse, an estate outside of Philadelphia, a sprawling compound in Massachusetts, and a home in Pacific Palisades, Calif.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 6, 2026
Despite the hardships, many Gazans working in IT stress their relatively good fortune.
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2026
Adding to those worries were some recent concerns about the AI build-out, the source of chip makers’ good fortune.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 27, 2026
The fulcrum of fortune has a way of seesawing from one condition to its opposite with no warning, like a sudden squall on an otherwise balmy day.
From "The Long-Lost Home" by Maryrose Wood
"The alternatives for getting cargo, whether that's hydrocarbons or container shipping, are really not great… it is really still troubling times with no clarity and no change of fortunes within sight."
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2026
The vast fortunes being minted in other corners of Silicon Valley had mostly missed East Palo Alto, Calif., where the Primary School opened in 2016.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 1, 2026
The company’s first-mover advantage in quantum could boost its fortunes the way being a first mover in GPUs did for Nvidia, he recently told The Wall Street Journal.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 30, 2026
Once his visa expired and he had to go back home, his fortunes turned around, as Leganes were ready to sign Diomande to a professional contract.
From BBC ● Jul. 29, 2026
Even when all options seem to be gone, fortunes could change at any time.
From "Dry" by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
In May 2015, already a very successful MLM seller, Igor Alberts was invited to a OneCoin event in Dubai, where he met lots of people, all apparently making fortuned with this new currency.
From BBC ● Nov. 23, 2019
Alfred Milner was born 71 years ago, the son of a modestly fortuned country physician.
From Time Magazine Archive
But that fortuned that it might appear, that they were not of us.
From The first New Testament printed in English by
And it fortuned that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: The rich man also died, and was buried.
From The first New Testament printed in English by
For, being unfriend to Arthur and his court, Well wist he this grim Earl would bless that sport Of fortune which had fortuned him so well To have to starve his sovereign in a cell.—
From Accolon of Gaul with Other Poems by Cawein, Madison Julius
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.
