fortune

—fortuneless, adj.

/fawr"cheuhn/, n., v., fortuned, fortuning.

n.

1. position in life as determined by wealth: to make one's fortune.

2. wealth or riches: to lose a small fortune in bad investments.

3. great wealth; ample stock of money, property, and the like: to be worth a fortune.

4. chance; luck: They each had the bad fortune to marry the wrong person.

5. fortunes. things that happen or are to happen to a person in his or her life.

6. fate; lot; destiny: whatever my fortune may be.

7. (cap.) chance personified, commonly regarded as a mythical being distributing arbitrarily or capriciously the lots of life: Perhaps Fortune will smile on our venture.

8. good luck; success; prosperity: a family blessed by fortune.

9. Archaic. a wealthy woman; an heiress.

10. tell someone's fortune, to profess to inform someone of future events in his or her own life; foretell.

v.t.

11. Archaic. to endow (someone or something) with a fortune.

v.i.

12. Archaic. to chance or happen; come by chance.

[1250-1300; ME < OF < L fortuna chance, luck, fortune, deriv. of fort- (s. of fors) chance]

Syn. 4. fate, destiny, providence; kismet, karma. 7. Moira; Lady Luck.

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