Fortune Is Both a Pile of Money and a Roll of the Dice
A fortune is a large sum of money, and also chance itself. The Roman goddess Fortuna stands behind both.
Fortune means wealth and it means luck, and the two senses sit side by side without embarrassment. Fortuna was the Roman goddess of chance, usually shown with a wheel: turn it and the man at the top goes to the bottom. That wheel is why a fortune can be made and lost.
- A large amount of money. *He made a fortune.*
- Chance or luck. *By good fortune, she was home.*
- A person's fate. *Tell my fortune.*
- Fortunes — changing circumstances. *The club's fortunes improved.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | fortune | A small fortune. |
| Plural | fortunes | Mixed fortunes. |
| Adjective | fortunate | Fortunate timing. |
| Adverb | fortunately | Fortunately, nobody was hurt. |
| Opposite | misfortune | A run of misfortune. |
How it is used in a sentence
- That coat must have cost a fortune.Informal exaggeration about price.
- Fortune favours the bold.A proverb translated from Latin.
- The team's fortunes turned in the second half.Plural for a changing situation.
Luck words
- Fortune — chance, often with a sense of destiny
- Luck — plain chance, good or bad
- Chance — the neutral mechanism
- Fate — what is meant to happen
- Serendipity — a happy accident while looking for something else
From Old French *fortune*, from Latin *fortuna*, chance or luck, the name of the goddess. *Fortunately* and *misfortune* both keep the older sense; only the wealth sense has drifted.
Where does the wheel of fortune come from?
From medieval images of Fortuna turning a wheel, raising and dropping people at random. It appears throughout medieval literature and art.
Fortunate or lucky?
They mean the same, but fortunate is more formal and often used about circumstances rather than about a person's chance.