Dictionary
for•tune
Pronunciation: (fôr'chun), [key]
—n., v., -tuned, -tun•ing.
—
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.
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v.t.
Archaic.to endow (someone or something) with a fortune.
—
v.i.
Archaic.to chance or happen; come by chance.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.
