First recorded in 1680–90
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
She called the matter a “horrific and vulgar fraud” perpetrated by a fortune hunter.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 16, 2023
He was freed from the misery of that boarding school only when Sarah, having been bilked by a fortune hunter, went broke and had to withdraw him.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 9, 2019
A fortune hunter charms a doctor’s plain daughter in 19th-century New York.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 19, 2019
Original owner John McConnell was a fortune hunter, and the Double Eagle was a rare doubloon discovered in a sunken treasure.
From Golf Digest ● Jan. 4, 2017
Why had Quinzy gone to so much trouble to bring this fortune hunter and his ostrich to Ashton Place?
From "The Unseen Guest" by Maryrose Wood
The heroes have all been reduced to just one or two identifiable traits: One’s a conspiracy theorist, one’s a fortune-hunter, one’s religious and so on.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 5, 2021
Roguish fortune-hunter Nathan Drake returned for his fourth adventure this year, setting out to discover the lost treasure of pirate captain Henry Avery – while also saving his troubled marriage to fellow adventurer, Elena.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 29, 2016
No social climber, no fortune-hunter is "Jimmy" Cromwell.
From Time Magazine Archive
It's awfully good of you to try to put it in that light, but no one would ever believe that I wasn't mercenary—that I wasn't a shameless cad of a fortune-hunter.
From A Romance in Transit by Lynde, Francis
The young fortune-hunter looked at me with perfect calm and said: "Who's to tell her that I admitted I'd never seen her old uncle?"
From Miss Million's Maid A Romance of Love and Fortune by Onions, Mrs. Oliver
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.
