fortune

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (2)  · 
“
He had always intended to enjoy in later life the wealth for which he had worked hard in his prime; and as soon as his fortune was assured, he had made several cautious but determined experiments to discover where enjoyment might abide.

View all »
Definitions (32)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (12)

  1. noun The chance happening of fortunate or adverse events; luck: He decided to go home for the holidays, and his fortune turned for the worse.
  2. noun The turns of luck in the course of one's life.
  3. noun Success, especially when at least partially resulting from luck: No matter what they tried, it ended in fortune.
9 more from this dictionary »

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (13)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (3)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (4)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • Doing it with materials that don't cost a fortune is the problem. —  AutoblogGreen
  • Coll's take on Saudi politics in the years when Mohamed bin Laden made his fortune is the conventional one. —  London Review of Books
  • But something like this fortune is a bit tough for me. —  BenSpark.com
  • From what I can recall, some of this fortune is a combo of the Canucks having a 12-6-2 record before Luongo was injured and the "barely treading water" 10-12-3 record while Luongo was injured. —  BC Bloggers
  • The Nigerian looking for someone to help bank a fortune is also familiar. —  IOL Technology
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 172 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

wealth ·  success ·  happiness ·  fate ·  strength ·  circumstance ·  profit ·  fame ·  health ·  estate ·  honor ·  courage

Used in the same contextWord Family

fortune:   fortunes
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, from Old French, from Latin fortūna; see bher-1 in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. from Middle English fortune, from Old French fortune, French fortune = Spanish Portuguese Italian fortuna, from Latin fortuna, chance, hap, luck, fate, fortune, good fortune, prosperity, etc., from for(t-)s, chance, prob. allied to ferre, bear, bring, = English bear.
  2. from Middle English fortunen, from Old French fortuner = Italian fortunare, from Latin fortunare, make prosperous: see fortune, n., fortunate.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/ˈfɔrtʃjun/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about twice a day.

Recently looked up

Frithiof · bookkeeping · HAINES · heresy · waivers

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

these grunts every eight hours · haul it off to our darkest dungeon · send for a doctor · forget what witticism you were originally going to insert here because you've just banged your knee on your desk · the rest will come naturally