noun
-
evil fortune; bad luck
-
an unfortunate or disastrous event; calamity
Synonym Usage
See affliction.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of misfortune
Explanation
On a gloomy day, you may feel compelled to list your misfortunes: a broken umbrella, a broken heart, a broken toe. Misfortune means bad luck or the state of having bad luck. Break misfortune into its parts and you get mis- meaning bad and fortune meaning chance or luck. Sometimes it can feel like misfortune follows you. Picture it as a gloomy psychic named "Miss Fortune" who can only see the bad things in your future.
Vocabulary lists containing misfortune
Power Prefix: mis-
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"The Experiment" and "Superstition"
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Girl with a Pearl Earring
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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:
Everyone knows the championship is basically over, barring some kind of dramatic misfortune.
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2026
Whether Norris' misfortune leads to a change, such as ensuring that a VSC is deployed for at least one whole lap, remains to be seen.
From BBC ● Sep. 15, 2026
"He was a star... He had chosen the spotlight," Ditum argued, acknowledging that his story had the "misfortune" to break in the middle of a summer news vacuum.
From Barron's ● Aug. 19, 2026
At the time of her misfortune, I was book editor of the Los Angeles Times.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2026
But she is suffering greatly, and as she’s my servant, my soul would bear the burden of her misfortune.
From "Dread Nation" by Justina Ireland
Back pain, difficult childbirth, dental crowding and sinus infections are not random misfortunes.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 11, 2026
Russell, 28, cut a forlorn figure afterwards as he contemplated the series of misfortunes that have derailed his season.
From BBC ● Jun. 7, 2026
Practical advice from one Charles Dickens in “Sketches by Boz”: “Reflect upon your present blessings—of which every man has many—not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 26, 2025
The human condition includes a vast array of unavoidable misfortunes.
From Salon ● Oct. 23, 2025
Several times they started to build a city, but they were always driven away by misfortunes or bad omens.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
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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.
