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.
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great wealth; ample stock of money, property, and the like.
Those gems are worth a fortune.
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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
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(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:
He made a fortune in Russia before he served as Georgia’s prime minister between 2012 and 2013.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 13, 2026
The article had pictures of Durham Prison, revealing that "the men who were found guilty of stealing a fortune in mailbags spend their week stitching them for nine shillings".
From BBC ● Sep. 13, 2026
That could put at risk Wilson’s fortune, estimated at roughly $6 billion, as well as the leverage he has over the athleisure company he founded.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 13, 2026
Chicago went 7-4 in one-score games last year, and teams that lean on that kind of good fortune tend to regress the following season.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2026
“My son—your grandfather—made his fortune in the mines.”
From "A Girl Named Disaster" by Nancy Farmer
Wealthy Americans have for years used a popular type of trust to transfer fortunes to their children without paying hefty gift and estate taxes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 21, 2026
The truth is closer to home: The everywhere millionaires we describe are in metros, suburbs and rural areas across the country, building extraordinary fortunes in ordinary businesses.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 21, 2026
Abrams plays the goofball well and we’re constantly rooting for him, even as his fortunes take a turn in a tragic reversal that we’ve seen in monster movies before.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2026
Diametrically opposed to the doomers are the accelerationists, who believe in technology's advancement, its inevitability and its fundamental benefit for society -- and who also make their fortunes on its success.
From Barron's ● Sep. 15, 2026
Kaori could tell the fortunes and provide spiritual guidance, and Just Renee could help her with spells or something.
From "Hello, Universe" by Erin Entrada Kelly
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
And it fortuned them to mete the husbande of the said gentyll woman and desyred hym of his iudgment, shewynge hym all the hole mater.
From Shakespeare Jest-Books Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed to Have Been Used by Shakespeare by William Carew Hazlitt
And it fortuned that he tarried many days in Ioppa with one Simon a tanner.
From The first New Testament printed in English by
It fortuned after on a day that he gave battle to the same king of Egypt, wherein he was grievously wounded; nevertheless, he obtained the victory, notwithstanding he had his deadly wound.
From Mediaeval Tales by Henry Morley
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.
