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
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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:
In Georgia, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms defeated billionaire health care executive Rick Jackson in the governor's race, after he poured more than $200 million of his fortune into his bid, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
From Barron's ● Nov. 4, 2026
Critics include some of California’s richest people, and they have spent a fortune in an effort to defeat it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 31, 2026
The game’s reversals of fortune provide drama and suspense, leaving a void during the off season.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2026
He has had some luck, and some of his wins have turned on fortune - safety cars in Japan and Madrid, for example.
From BBC ● Oct. 27, 2026
Now painfully awake, the broker drank a strong black coffee and rued his change of fortune.
From "The Long-Lost Home" by Maryrose Wood
Its fortunes have waned over the years, and in 2023 it was sold to a performance-marketing company, an all-too-common fate for many of the publications that once flourished online.
From Slate ● Nov. 6, 2026
The 10-brand group's declining fortunes in the world's largest car market are the main reason behind a historic restructuring drive that could see it shed up to 120,000 jobs by the end of the decade.
From Barron's ● Nov. 6, 2026
Big-money tycoons have leveraged their fortunes to shape the state with their railroads, mines, newspapers, oil businesses and ranching and agriculture.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 4, 2026
U.S. stocks saw a stronger reversal in fortunes in October, as worries about dwindling free cash flows and rising borrowing costs threw a wrench into the works of the artificial-intelligence trade.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 2, 2026
Jefferson’s fortunes took a great leap when he, like George Washington, married a wealthy widow.
From "In the Shadow of Liberty" by Kenneth C. Davis
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
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
Ah, M. didn’t fortune right when she fortuned that.
From The Gypsies by Charles Godfrey Leland
For his shameful ende: fortuned for lacke of lore.
From The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 by Alexander Barclay
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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.
