fortune

American  

[fawr-chuhn] / ˈfɔr tʃən /

noun

1. position in life as determined by wealth.

   It's not easy to make one's fortune from humble beginnings.

2. wealth or riches.

   He lost a small fortune in bad investments.

3. great wealth; ample stock of money, property, and the like.

   Those gems are worth a fortune.

4. chance; luck.

   They each had the bad fortune to marry the wrong person.

   Synonyms:

   karma, kismet, providence, destiny, fate

5. 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.

6. fate; lot; destiny.

   Whatever my fortune may be, my faith will guide me.

7. Fortune. chance personified, commonly regarded as a mythical being distributing arbitrarily or capriciously the lots of life.

   Perhaps Fortune will smile on our venture.

   Synonyms:

   Lady Luck, Moira

8. good luck; success; prosperity.

   The family was blessed by fortune.

9. Archaic. a wealthy woman; an heiress.

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verb (used with object)

fortuned, fortuning

1. Archaic. to endow (someone or something) with a fortune.

verb (used without object)

fortuned, fortuning

1. Archaic. to chance or happen; come by chance.

idioms

1. tell someone's fortune, to profess to inform someone of future events in their own life; foretell.

fortune British  

/ ˈfɔːtʃən /

noun

1. an amount of wealth or material prosperity, esp, when unqualified, a great amount

2. a large sum of money

3. a power or force, often personalized, regarded as being responsible for human affairs; chance

4. luck, esp when favourable

5. (often plural) a person's lot or destiny

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verb

1. archaic

   1. (tr) to endow with great wealth

   2. (intr) to happen by chance

fortune More Idioms  

1. see make a fortune.

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Other Word Forms

• fortuneless adjective

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.

Example Sentences

If fortune favours the brave, will Slot have the courage to start Ngumoha in an attempt to retrieve that deficit when the Champions League holders come to Anfield for Tuesday's second leg?

From BBC • Apr. 11, 2026

Customers were shocked to find that tickets for LA28, which officials billed as “affordable” for locals, could cost a small fortune.

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 8, 2026

The release could signal a turn of fortune for the company following the underwhelming debut of its last open-source model, Llama 4, in April 2025.

From Barron's • Apr. 8, 2026

Steyer, who has a net worth of $2.4 billion according to Forbes, has painted himself as a reformed billionaire who walked away from Farallon because of angst about how he earned his fortune.

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 6, 2026

When our entire fortune was lost to the surging waters of the Bistrifa—a shipload of fabric and ready-made clothes gone in an instant—he returned to his former career.

From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros