Fortunately

How to spell fortunately

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce fortunately

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fortunately mean?

1. adverbBy good luck; in a way that brings a welcome or favourable outcome.

Fortunately in a sentence

• Fortunately the train was delayed too, so she still made her connection.

• The storm passed quickly, and fortunately no homes were damaged.

Where does fortunately come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin fortuna, meaning 'luck', 'chance', or 'fortune', which itself derived from fors, the Latin word for 'chance' or 'random happening'. The Romans even personified Fortuna as a goddess who controlled the unpredictable turns of human life, often pictured turning a wheel. From fortuna came the adjective 'fortunate', meaning 'favoured by luck', which English borrowed through Old French in the late 1300s. The adverb 'fortunately' was then built in English by adding the native '-ly' ending, and by the 1500s it carried the modern sense of 'as luck would have it' or 'happily'. The same fortuna root still sits inside everyday relatives like 'fortune' and 'misfortune', and the spelling trap is the quiet '-ate-' syllable buried in the middle, which is easy to drop or reshape when writing quickly.

How the word is built

• fortun- (from Latin fortuna: luck, chance)
• -ate (adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)