adventurer
Americannoun
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a person who has, enjoys, or seeks adventures.
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a seeker of fortune in daring enterprises; soldier of fortune.
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a person who undertakes great commercial risk; speculator.
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a person who seeks power, wealth, or social rank by unscrupulous or questionable means.
They thought John was an adventurer and after their daughter's money.
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Usually Adventurer a member of Camp Fire, Inc., who is between the ages of 9 and 11.
noun
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a person who seeks adventure, esp one who seeks success or money through daring exploits
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a person who seeks money or power by unscrupulous means
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a speculator
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of adventurer
Explanation
If you boldly travel to exotic and unexplored locations, you're an adventurer. One thing all adventurers have in common is a willingness to face risks and even danger in pursuit of excitement. Being an adventurer might mean scaling the highest mountains, diving to the bottom of the ocean — or for a very young child, riding a bike all the way to the end of the block. Many adventurers love to travel, particularly to rugged or unfamiliar locations. If you love adventure, you can call yourself an adventurer. Both words stem from the Latin adventura, "about to happen."
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:
The result is an often exhilarating, often disturbing and always poignant tale of an artist and adventurer who lived to challenge the limits of what humans could do.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 13, 2026
I once asked James Cameron, the director and adventurer, why we should travel to Mars and such places.
From Slate ● Dec. 9, 2025
Popular images, such as the fearless adventurer, powerful fighter and skilled seafarer, have become familiar.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 23, 2025
Snake is a wonderfully pulpy, instantly iconic creation, an outcast adventurer reeking of sweat and post-Vietnam cynicism.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2025
Traditional histories like to equate Beethoven, the colossus of music in the early 1800s, with his contemporary Napoleon Bonaparte, revolutionary-turned-Emperor and serial military adventurer.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
Even so, sonic adventurers, beginning with Leopold Stokowski in the 1930s, experimented with amplification in an obsessive, seemingly quixotic effort to locate a mythical sonic grail on the Cahuenga Pass.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 16, 2026
Nepal is home to eight of the world's 10 highest peaks and welcomes hundreds of adventurers each spring.
From Barron's ● May 22, 2026
Figures like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon were adventurers, and while perhaps not personally admirable, they changed history and changed it irrevocably:
From Salon ● Mar. 28, 2026
LONDON—The band of adventurers call it “Operation Certain Death.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 19, 2026
We are Hassan and Amir, famed adventurers and the world’s greatest explorers, about to receive a medal of honor for our courageous feat...
From "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini
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.
