Fortune FOR'TUNE, n. [L. fortuna, fero or porto, tempestivus. See Hour and Time.]
1. Properly, chance; accident; luck; the arrival of something in a sudden or unexpected manner. Hence the heathens deified chance, and consecrated temples and altars to the goddess. Hence the modern use of the word, for a power supposed to distribute the lots of life, according to her own humor.
Though fortune's malice overthrow my state.
2. The good or ill that befalls man.
In you the fortune of Great Britain lies.
3. Success, good or bad; event.
Our equal crimes shall equal fortune give.
4. The chance of life; means of living; wealth.
His father dying, he was driven to London to seek his fortune.
5. Estate; possessions, as a gentleman of small fortune.
6. A large estate; great wealth. This is often the sense of the word standing alone or unqualified; as a gentleman or lady of fortune. To the ladies we say, beware of fortune-hunters.
7. The portion of a man or woman; generally of a woman.
8. Futurity; future state or events; destiny. The young are anxious to have their fortunes told.
You who men's fortunes in their faces read.
FOR'TUNE, v.t.
1. To make fortunate. [Not used.]
2. To dispose fortunately or not; also, to presage. Obs.
FOR'TUNE, v.i. To befall; to fall out; to happen; to come casually to pass.
It fortuned the same night that a christian serving a Turk in the camp, secretly gave the watchmen warning.

fortune n 1: an unknown and unpredictable phenomenon that causes an event to result one way rather than another; "bad luck caused his downfall"; "we ran into each other by pure chance" [syn: luck, fortune, chance, hazard] 2: a large amount of wealth or prosperity 3: an unknown and unpredictable phenomenon that leads to a favorable outcome; "it was my good luck to be there"; "they say luck is a lady"; "it was as if fortune guided his hand" [syn: luck, fortune] 4: your overall circumstances or condition in life (including everything that happens to you); "whatever my fortune may be"; "deserved a better fate"; "has a happy lot"; "the luck of the Irish"; "a victim of circumstances"; "success that was her portion" [syn: fortune, destiny, fate, luck, lot, circumstances, portion]

fortune c.1300, "chance, luck as a force in human affairs," from O.Fr. fortune (12c.), from L. fortuna, from fors (gen. fortis) "chance, luck," from PIE base *bhrtis-. Often personified as a goddess; her wheel betokens vicissitude. Sense of "owned wealth" first found in Spenser; probably it evolved from senses of "one's condition or standing in life," hence "position as determined by wealth," then "wealth itself." Soldier of fortune first attested 1661. The fortune cookie (1962) is said to have been invented by David Jung, Chinese immigrant to America who established Hong Kong Noodle Co. in Los Angeles. Fortune 500 "most profitable American companies" is 1955, from the list published annually in "Fortune" magazine. Fortunate Islands "mythical abode of the blessed dead, in the Western Ocean," 1432, translates L. Fortunat?i Insul?i.

fortune I. noun Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin fortuna; akin to Latin fort-, fors chance, luck, and perhaps to ferre to carry — more at bear Date: 14th century 1. often capitalized a hypothetical force or personified power that unpredictably determines events and issues favorably or unfavorably 2. obsolete accident, incident 3. a. prosperity attained partly through luck ; success b. luck 1 c. plural the turns and courses of luck accompanying one's progress (as through life) <her fortunes varied but she never gave up> 4. destiny, fate <can tell your fortune>; also a prediction of fortune 5. a. riches, wealth <a man of fortune> b. a store of material possessions <the family fortune> c. a very large sum of money <spent a fortune redecorating> II. verb (fortuned; fortuning) Date: 14th century transitive verb 1. obsolete to give good or bad fortune to 2. archaic to endow with a fortune intransitive verb archaic happen, chance

fortune
n.
1 a chance or luck as a force in human affairs. b a person's destiny.
2 (Fortune) this force personified, often as a deity.
3 (in sing. or pl.) luck (esp. favourable) that befalls a person or enterprise.
4 good luck.
5 prosperity; a prosperous condition.
6 (also colloq. small fortune) great wealth; a huge sum of money.
Phrases and idioms:
fortune-hunter colloq. a person seeking wealth by marriage. fortune-teller a person who claims to predict future events in a person's life. fortune-telling the practice of this. make a (or one's) fortune acquire wealth or prosperity. tell a person's fortune make predictions about a person's future.
Etymology: ME f. OF f. L fortuna luck, chance

fortune (fortunes) Frequency: The word is one of the 3000 most common words in English. 1. You can refer to a large sum of money as a fortune or a small fortune to emphasize how large it is. We had to eat out all the time. It ended up costing a fortune... He made a small fortune in the London property boom. N-COUNT [emphasis] 2. Someone who has a fortune has a very large amount of money. He made his fortune in car sales... Having spent his rich wife's fortune, the Major ended up in a debtors' prison. N-COUNT: oft poss N 3. Fortune or good fortune is good luck. Ill fortune is bad luck. Government ministers are starting to wonder how long their good fortune can last. N-UNCOUNT 4. If you talk about someone's fortunes or the fortunes of something, you are talking about the extent to which they are doing well or being successful. The electoral fortunes of the Liberal Democratic party may decline... The company had to do something to reverse its sliding fortunes. N-PLURAL: with poss 5. When someone tells your fortune, they tell you what they think will happen to you in the future, which they say is shown, for example, by the lines on your hand. PHRASE: V inflects

fortune ˈfɔ:tʃən n. 1 a chance or luck as a force in human affairs. b a person's destiny. 2 (Fortune) this force personified, often as a deity. 3 (in sing. or pl.) luck (esp. favourable) that befalls a person or enterprise. 4 good luck. 5 prosperity; a prosperous condition. 6 (also colloq. small fortune) great wealth; a huge sum of money. øfortune-hunter colloq. a person seeking wealth by marriage. fortune-teller a person who claims to predict future events in a person's life. fortune-telling the practice of this. make a (or one's) fortune acquire wealth or prosperity. tell a person's fortune make predictions about a person's future. [ME f. OF f. L fortuna luck, chance]

FORTUNE Fortune, men say, doth give too much to many, But yet she never gave enough to any. Epigrams. SIR J. HARRINGTON. Are there not, dear Michal, Two points in the adventure of the diver, One--when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge? One--when, a prince, he rises with his pearl? Festus, I plunge. Paracelsus. R. BROWNING. When Fortune means to men most good, She looks upon them with a threatening eye. King John, Act iii. Sc. 4. SHAKESPEARE. Fortune in men has some small diff'rence made, One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade: The cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned, The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned. Essay on Man, Epistle IV. A. POPE. Who thinks that fortune cannot change her mind, Prepares a dreadful jest for all mankind. Second Book of Horace, Satire II. A. POPE. Will Fortune never come with both hands full, But write her fair words still in foulest letters? She either gives a stomach, and no food-- Such are the poor in health: or else a feast, And takes away the stomach--such are the rich, That have abundance and enjoy it not. K. Henry IV., Pt. II. Act iv. Sc. 4. SHAKESPEARE. Under heaven's high cope Fortune is god--all you endure and do Depends on circumstance as much as you. Epigrams. From the Greek. P.B. SHELLEY. There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures. Julius Caesar, Act iv. Sc. 3. SHAKESPEARE. Prosperity doth bewitch men, seeming clear; As seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near. White Devil, Act v. Sc. 6. J. WEBSTER. Oh, how portentous is prosperity! How comet-like, it threatens while it shines. Night Thoughts, Night V. DR. E. YOUNG. I have set my life up on a cast, And I will stand the hazard of the die. King Richard III., Act v. Sc. 4. SHAKESPEARE. Blessed are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger, To sound what stop she please. Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 2. SHAKESPEARE. There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out. King Henry V., Act iv. Sc. 1. SHAKESPEARE.

Fortune Will fortune never come with both hands full, But write her fair words still in foulest letters? She either gives a stomach, and no food,-- Such as are the poor in health; or else a feast, And takes away the stomach,--such are the rich, That have abundance, and enjoy it not. SHAKESPEARE: 2 Henry IV., Act iv., Sc. 4. Fortune is female: from my youth her favors Were not withheld, the fault was mine to hope Her former smiles again at this late hour. BYRON: Mar. Faliero, Act v., Sc. 1. Forever, Fortune, wilt thou prove An unrelenting foe to love; And when we meet a mutual heart, Come in between and bid us part? THOMSON: Song.

Fortune \For"tune\, v. t. [OF. fortuner, L. fortunare. See Fortune, n.] 1. To make fortunate; to give either good or bad fortune to. [Obs.] --Chaucer. 2. To provide with a fortune. --Richardson. 3. To presage; to tell the fortune of. [Obs.] --Dryden.

Fortune \For"tune\, v. i. To fall out; to happen. It fortuned the same night that a Christian, serving a Turk in the camp, secretely gave the watchmen warning. --Knolles.

Fortune \For"tune\ (f[^o]r"t[-u]n; 135), n. [F. fortune, L. fortuna; akin to fors, fortis, chance, prob. fr. ferre to bear, bring. See Bear to support, and cf. Fortuitous.] 1. The arrival of something in a sudden or unexpected manner; chance; accident; luck; hap; also, the personified or deified power regarded as determining human success, apportioning happiness and unhappiness, and distributing arbitrarily or fortuitously the lots of life. 'T is more by fortune, lady, than by merit. --Shak. O Fortune, Fortune, all men call thee fickle. --Shak. 2. That which befalls or is to befall one; lot in life, or event in any particular undertaking; fate; destiny; as, to tell one's fortune. You, who men's fortunes in their faces read. --Cowley. 3. That which comes as the result of an undertaking or of a course of action; good or ill success; especially, favorable issue; happy event; success; prosperity as reached partly by chance and partly by effort. Our equal crimes shall equal fortune give. --Dryden. There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. --Shak. His father dying, he was driven to seek his fortune. --Swift. 4. Wealth; large possessions; large estate; riches; as, a gentleman of fortune. Syn: Chance; accident; luck; fate. Fortune book, a book supposed to reveal future events to those who consult it. --Crashaw. Fortune hunter, one who seeks to acquire wealth by marriage. Fortune teller, one who professes to tell future events in the life of another. Fortune telling, the practice or art of professing to reveal future events in the life of another.

FORTUNE for'-tun (Gad): A god of Good Luck, possibly the Hyades. See ASTROLOGY, 10.

fortune n. 1. Chance, accident, luck, hap, fortuity, casualty. 2. Livelihood, means of living. 3. Estate, substance, property, possessions. 4. Wealth, riches, opulence, affluence. 5. Destiny, fate, destination, doom, lot, star, future condition. 6. Event, issue, result. 7. Success, favorable issue.

fortune ˈfɔ:tʃən n. 1 position, worth, means, assets, holdings, wealth, property, estate, possessions; wealth, riches, affluence, opulence, treasure, money, prosperity: Each member is liable to the full extent of his fortune. He acquired his fortune from oil. 2 luck, chance, fortuity; lot, fate, kismet, destiny, karma; future; US happenstance: It was just fortune that put me in the right place at the right time. She'll tell your fortune if you cross her palm with silver. 3 Usually, fortunes. circumstance(s), experience(s), adventures, expectation(s), lot: My fortunes of late have been poor.

179 Moby Thesaurus words for "fortune": Clio, Friday, Friday the thirteenth, Muse of history, accidentality, actuarial calculation, adventitiousness, adventures, affluence, annals, appointed lot, assets, astral influences, astrology, autobiography, beggared, biographical sketch, biography, blessing, bomb, boodle, book of fate, bottomless purse, break, bulging purse, bundle, calculated risk, case history, casualness, chance, chronicle, chronicles, chronology, circumstances, confessions, constellation, cup, curriculum vitae, destination, destiny, destitute, diary, dies funestis, doom, easy circumstances, embarras de richesses, end, estate, expectations, experiences, fatality, fate, felicity, flier, flukiness, foredoom, fortuitousness, fortuity, fortunateness, fortuneless, fortunes, future, gamble, gold, good fortune, good luck, hagiography, hagiology, handsome fortune, hap, happenstance, happy chance, happy fortune, hazard, heedless hap, high income, high tax bracket, historiography, history, holdings, how they fall, ides of March, impecunious, impoverished, independence, indeterminacy, indeterminateness, indigent, inevitability, journal, karma, kismet, law of averages, legend, life, life and letters, life story, lot, luck, luckiness, lucre, luxuriousness, mammon, martyrology, material wealth, means, memoir, memoirs, memorabilia, memorial, memorials, mint, moira, money, money to burn, moneybags, necrology, needy, obituary, opportunity, opulence, opulency, packet, pelf, penurious, photobiography, pile, planets, play, plunge, portion, position, possessions, pot, poverty-stricken, pretty penny, principle of indeterminacy, probability, problematicness, profile, property, prosperity, prosperousness, random sample, record, resources, resume, riches, richness, risk, roll, run of luck, serendipity, six-figure income, smiles of fortune, speculation, stars, statistical probability, story, substance, the breaks, theory of history, theory of probability, tidy sum, treasure, uncertainty, uncertainty principle, unlucky day, unprosperous, upper bracket, venture, wad, wealth, wealthiness, weird, whatever comes, wheel of fortune, will of Heaven, worth

fortune FORTUNE(6) UNIX Reference Manual FORTUNE(6) NAME fortune - print a random, hopefully interesting, adage SYNOPSIS fortune [-acefilosw] [-n length] [ -m pattern] [[n%] file/dir/all] DESCRIPTION When fortune is run with no arguments it prints out a random epigram. Epigrams are divided into several categories, where each category is sub-divided into those which are potentially offensive and those which are not. Options The options are as follows: -a Choose from all lists of maxims, both offensive and not. (See the -o option for more information on offensive fortunes.) -c Show the cookie file from which the fortune came. -e Consider all fortune files to be of equal size (see discussion below on multiple files). -f Print out the list of files which would be searched, but don't print a fortune. -l Long dictums only. See -n on how ``long'' is defined in this sense. -m pattern Print out all fortunes which match the basic regular expression pattern. The syntax of these expressions depends on how your system defines re_comp(3) or regcomp(3), but it should neverthe- less be similar to the syntax used in grep(1). The fortunes are output to standard output, while the names of the file from which each fortune comes are printed to standard error. Either or both can be redirected; if standard output is redirected to a file, the result is a valid fortunes database file. If standard error is also redirected to this file, the result is still valid, but there will be ``bogus'' fortunes, i.e. the filenames themselves, in parentheses. This can be use- ful if you wish to remove the gathered matches from their origi- nal files, since each filename-record will precede the records from the file it names. -n length Set the longest fortune length (in characters) considered to be ``short'' (the default is 160). All fortunes longer than this are considered ``long''. Be careful! If you set the length too short and ask for short fortunes, or too long and ask for long ones, fortune goes into a never-ending thrash loop. -o Choose only from potentially offensive aphorisms. The -o option is ignored if a fortune directory is specified. Please, please, please request a potentially offensive fortune if and only if you believe, deep in your heart, that you are willing to be offended. (And that you'll just quit using -o rather than give us grief about it, okay?) ... let us keep in mind the basic governing philosophy of The Brotherhood, as handsomely summarized in these words: we believe in healthy, hearty laughter -- at the expense of the whole human race, if needs be. Needs be. --H. Allen Smith, "Rude Jokes" -s Short apothegms only. See -n on which fortunes are considered ``short''. -i Ignore case for -m patterns. -w Wait before termination for an amount of time calculated from the number of characters in the message. This is useful if it is executed as part of the logout procedure to guarantee that the message can be read before the screen is cleared. The user may specify alternate sayings. You can specify a specific file, a directory which contains one or more files, or the special word all which says to use all the standard databases. Any of these may be preceded by a percentage, which is a number n between 0 and 100 inclu- sive, followed by a %. If it is, there will be a n percent probability that an adage will be picked from that file or directory. If the per- centages do not sum to 100, and there are specifications without per- centages, the remaining percent will apply to those files and/or direc- tories, in which case the probability of selecting from one of them will be based on their relative sizes. As an example, given two databases funny and not-funny, with funny twice as big (in number of fortunes, not raw file size), saying fortune funny not-funny will get you fortunes out of funny two-thirds of the time. The command fortune 90% funny 10% not-funny will pick out 90% of its fortunes from funny (the ``10% not-funny'' is unnecessary, since 10% is all that's left). The -e option says to consider all files equal; thus fortune -e funny not-funny is equivalent to fortune 50% funny 50% not-funny This fortune also supports the BSD method of appending ``-o'' to database names to specify offensive fortunes. However this is not how fortune stores them: offensive fortunes are stored in a seperate direc- tory without the ``-o'' infix. A plain name (i.e., not a path to a file or directory) that ends in ``-o'' will be assumed to be an offen- sive database, and will have its suffix stripped off and be searched in the offensive directory (even if the neither of the -a or -o options were specified). This feature is not only for backwards-compatibility, but also to allow users to distinguish between inoffensive and offen- sive databases of the same name. For example, assuming there is a database named definitions in both the inoffensive and potentially offensive collections, then the following command will select an inoffensive definition 90% of the time, and a potentially offensive definition for the remaining 10%: fortune 90% definitions definitions-o FILES Note: these are the defaults as defined at compile time. /usr/share/games/fortunes Directory for innoffensive fortunes. /usr/share/games/fortunes/off Directory for offensive fortunes. If a particular set of fortunes is particularly unwanted, there is an easy solution: delete the associated .dat file. This leaves the data intact, should the file later be wanted, but since fortune no longer finds the pointers file, it ignores the text file. BUGS The division of fortunes into offensive and non-offensive by directory, rather than via the `-o' file infix, is not 100% compatible with origi- nal BSD fortune. Although the `-o' infix is recognised as referring to an offensive database, the offensive database files still need to be in a separate directory. The workaround, of course, is to move the `-o' files into the offensive directory (with or without renaming), and to use the -a option. The supplied fortune databases have been attacked, in order to correct orthographical and grammatical errors, and particularly to reduce redundancy and repetition and redundancy. But especially to avoid rep- etitiousness. This has not been a complete success. In the process, some fortunes may also have been lost. The fortune databases are now divided into a larger number of smaller files, some organized by format (poetry, definitions), and some by con- tent (religion, politics). There are parallel files in the main direc- tory and in the offensive files directory (e.g., fortunes/definitions and fortunes/off/definitions). Not all the potentially offensive for- tunes are in the offensive fortunes files, nor are all the fortunes in the offensive files potentially offensive, probably, though a strong attempt has been made to achieve greater consistency. Also, a better division might be made. HISTORY This version of fortune is based on the NetBSD fortune 1.4, but with a number of bug fixes and enhancements. The original fortune/strfile format used a single file; strfile read the text file and converted it to null-delimited strings, which were stored after the table of pointers in the .dat file. By NetBSD fortune 1.4, this had changed to two separate files: the .dat file was only the header (the table of pointers, plus flags; see strfile.h), and the text strings were left in their own file. The potential problem with this is that text file and header file may get out of synch, but the advan- tage is that the text files can be easily edited without resorting to unstr, and there is a potential savings in disk space (on the assump- tion that the sysadmin kept both .dat file with strings and the text file). Many of the enhancements made over the NetBSD version assumed a Linux system, and thus caused it to fail under other platforms, including BSD. The source code has since been made more generic, and currently works on SunOS 4.x as well as Linux, with support for more platforms expected in the future. Note that some bugs were inadvertently discov- ered and fixed during this process. At a guess, a great many people have worked on this program, many with- out leaving attributions. SEE ALSO re_comp(3), regcomp(3), strfile(1), unstr(1) BSD Experimental 19 April 94 [May. 97] FORTUNE(6)

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