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fortune
[ fawr-chuhn ]
noun
- 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.
- fate; lot; destiny:
Whatever my fortune may be, my faith will guide me.
- 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)
- Archaic. to endow (someone or something) with a fortune.
verb (used without object)
- Archaic. to chance or happen; come by chance.
fortune
/ ˈfɔːtʃən /
noun
- an amount of wealth or material prosperity, esp, when unqualified, a great amount
- small fortunesmall fortune a large sum of money
- 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
- archaic.
- tr to endow with great wealth
- intr to happen by chance
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Derived Forms
- ˈfortuneless, adjective
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Other Words From
- fortune·less adjective
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Word History and Origins
Origin of fortune1
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Word History and Origins
Origin of fortune1
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Idioms and Phrases
- tell someone's fortune, to profess to inform someone of future events in their own life; foretell.
More idioms and phrases containing fortune
see make a fortune .Discover More
Example Sentences
The building used to be an all-girls school, and when it was initially purchased by Fortune it was dilapidated.
Stanley Richards, Senior Vice President of the Fortune Society, gave a tour along with a few residents.
That good fortune meant CNN had the only TV correspondent on the scene.
Hitchcock had the historical good fortune to have worked from silent films through television.
“I suppose she'll want a fortune as well,” he says, looking at me as if I were Liv Ullmann's agent.
Sleek finds it far harder work than fortune-making; but he pursues his Will-o'-the-Wisp with untiring energy.
The fortune was proving quite as large as he had expected, and not even an inquest had been held upon the dead man.
But "the cards never forgive," and as a rule Dame Fortune is relentless to the reckless player.
Aristide always regarded the fortune of the moment as if it would last forever.
The fact that her fortune was vaguely threatened did not cause her anxiety: she scarcely realized it.
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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.
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