Unfortunate

How to spell unfortunate

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce unfortunate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unfortunate mean?

1. adjectiveHaving or marked by bad luck; regrettable or unlucky.

Unfortunate in a sentence

• It was unfortunate that the flight was cancelled on the morning of the wedding.

• The report contained an unfortunate error that delayed the entire project.

Where does unfortunate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on the Latin fortuna, the goddess of luck and the ordinary word for chance or fortune, which itself traces back to fors, meaning 'chance' or 'what happens by accident'. From fortuna English took 'fortunate', meaning blessed with good luck, and then added the native prefix un-, which simply means 'not', to flip the sense to 'lacking good luck'. The word arrived in the late 1500s, by which time the Latin root had already passed through French and settled into English as 'fortune'. The same root still powers everyday relatives such as 'fortune', 'fortunately', and even the gambler's 'fortuitous'. The spelling trap is the quiet middle: the -tun- syllable is unstressed and sounds like 'chun', tempting writers toward 'unfortunite' or a doubled letter, when in fact it neatly mirrors the noun 'fortune' with its silent ending dropped.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• fortun- (luck, from Latin fortuna)
• -ate (adjective suffix)