fortune

"Fortune" is a word with several closely related meanings. Most often, it refers to luck or to the way life happens to go for someone. "Good fortune" means good luck, while "ill fortune" means bad luck. If someone says, "fortune smiled on us," they mean things turned out well by chance.

The word also often means great wealth. If a person makes a fortune, they earn a lot of money. If a family has a fortune, they are very rich. In stories, people search for hidden fortunes, and in everyday life, people may talk about spending a fortune on a house, a wedding, or a medical bill. In that kind of sentence, it means a very large amount of money, even if it is not literally all of someone's wealth.

There is also a meaning connected to fate or destiny. In this sense, fortune is the course of a person's life or the events that shape it. "A turn of fortune" suggests that someone's situation has changed. "The fortunes of war" refers to the changing and uncertain results of war. This use is common in history, literature, and formal writing.

The word comes from the Latin fortuna, which was linked to chance and fate. That history helps explain why the word appears in phrases like "fortune teller," a person who claims to predict the future. So the word can point to luck, money, or the way life unfolds, depending on the context.