fortune
noun · verb
Simple meaning
One's wealth; the amount of money one has.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
fawrchuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈfɔɹtʃən
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
One's wealth; the amount of money one has, especially if it is vast.
A large amount of wealth or prosperity
A large amount of money.
An unknown and unpredictable phenomenon that causes an event to result one way rather than another
A prediction or set of predictions about a person's future provided by a fortune teller.
A small slip of paper with wise or vaguely prophetic words printed on it, baked into a fortune cookie.
verb
transitive
To provide (someone) with a fortune.
transitive
To tell the fortune of (someone); to presage.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: One's wealth; the amount of money one has, especially if it is vast.
Used this way, fortune is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Thin folded wafer containing a maxim on a slip of paper.
A person who seeks wealth through marriage.
A person who foretells your personal future.
The art or gift of prophecy (or the pretense of prophecy) by supernatural means.
An auspicious state resulting from favorable outcomes.
A large sum of money.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
By good fortune.
Having unexpected good fortune.
The goddess of fortune and good luck.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: to provide (someone) with a fortune
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.