fortune
Americannoun
-
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.
-
good luck; success; prosperity.
The family was blessed by fortune.
-
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
-
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:
After leaving professional campaign consulting in the mid-1990s, and making a substantial fortune in real estate, Reilly gave prolifically to various charities and assorted civic caucuses.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 26, 2026
They also form a partnership and set out to make their fortune and save the planet with a tidal-energy company that they claim will “power our civilization by slinging a yoke around the moon.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
Some people are going to make a fortune in the future using AI to pick stocks.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 24, 2026
The yearslong divorce battle nears a climax Friday, when a panel of appeals court judges is scheduled to decide how to divide Chey’s roughly $5 billion fortune with his 65-year-old ex-wife, Roh Soh-yeong.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
"Deirdre probably ordered the pizza herself to make it look like her fortune came true."
From "Case of the Sneaky Snowman: Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew, #5" by Carolyn Keene
Chad was a double-A first baseman with the Texas Rangers in 2009 and closely followed his dad’s fortunes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
Together, Samsung Electronics 005930 0.58%increase; up pointing triangle and SK Hynix 000660 -0.33%decrease; down pointing triangle account for over half of the index, tying the broader market’s fortunes to the two semiconductor giants.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
South Korea's president urged financial watchdogs to take "necessary measures" over new highly speculative investment products tied to the fortunes of the nation's AI chipmakers after share price declines left investors nursing losses.
From Barron's ● Jul. 21, 2026
With his supporters lining the street, he repeated key themes from the speech announcing his resignation in June, such as turning around the fortunes of the Labour Party and lowering child poverty.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
He had been made for royal joys, for the fortunes of a nation.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
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
As he went on his journey, it fortuned that he drew nigh to Damascus, and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven.
From The first New Testament printed in English by
Please you, I’ll tell you as we pass along, That you will wonder what hath fortuned.
From Two Gentlemen of Verona The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] by Clark, William George
When sir James Audley began to set forward to his enemies, it fortuned to sir Eustace d'Aubrecicourt as ye shall hear after.
From Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) by Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
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.
