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
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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:
But why should students and teachers have to rely on good fortune and courageous passersby for security?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026
But what’s the truth about Roman Abramovich’s fortune?
From BBC ● Oct. 12, 2026
Andrew Carnegie is believed to have given away $350 million, or roughly 90% of his fortune, over his lifetime.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 9, 2026
Adjusted for inflation, his fortune would be worth $30.4 billion today.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 9, 2026
I imagined the jaws of the desert would finally devour the city of bones, and the innkeep would move to Korla to find better fortune.
From "The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams" by Daniel Nayeri
The trend in the housing market reflects a growing divergence in the fortunes of the country’s economic classes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 19, 2026
On the eve of Liverpool's meeting with LASK, manager Andoni Iraola was repeatedly asked about the fortunes of Florian Wirtz and Bradley Barcola.
From BBC ● Oct. 14, 2026
However, their fortunes appear to have changed dramatically as the Cretaceous continued.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 14, 2026
"Love it, hate it, or fear it, AI is here, rapidly becoming a key driver of countries' relative fortunes in the world economy," said Georgieva last week.
From Barron's ● Oct. 11, 2026
She kept pulling new ones from her sack, cracking them open, and reading the fortunes.
From "The Mark of Athena" by Rick Riordan
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
Then the herdsmen, fled and went their ways into the city, and told everything, and what had fortuned unto them that were possessed of the devils.
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 William George Clark
Montrose had almost famished, but that he fortuned in his misery to light upon a small cottage in that wilderness, where he was supplied with some milk and bread.’
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 by Various
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
