Etymologically
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misfortune

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Pronunciation

  • UK: /mɪsˈfɔːtʃuːn/[1]
  • US: /mɪsˈfɔɹt͡ʃən/[1]

Etymology

It is formed from English mis- + fortune,[2][3][4][5][6] the prefix meaning "bad, wrong".[3] The OED suggests it was perhaps modelled on Anglo-Norman meschance, also meschance in Middle French, the source of mischance.[2] The OED, the Shorter Oxford and Etymonline take the prefix as the native English one,[2][4][3] whereas Hoad files the word under the prefix from French.[7] Fortune is from Old French fortune (“lot, good fortune, misfortune”), from Latin fortūna (“chance, fate, good luck”), from fors (“chance, luck”).[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Bad luck, adverse fortune: 1441, in the proceedings of the English Privy Council, which worried at the great loss to the king yif þat any mysfortune come þerto.[2][8] Etymonline dates the word to the mid-15th century, with the sense of an unfortunate event.[3] A verb misfortune, to come to grief, is recorded slightly earlier, from about 1425, and went out of use in the early 17th century.[2]

Semantic evolution

From bad luck in general the word soon came to mean a single unlucky event (about 1485), and by about 1500 it was used of adversity for which the sufferer is not to blame.[2][3] Johnson (1755) defined it as "calamity; ill luck; want of good fortune".[9] The proverb that misfortunes never come singly is recorded in English from 1611, in Cotgrave's dictionary, and the OED compares a French saying of the 14th century.[2] From 1756, in Scottish legal papers, to fall into or have a misfortune was a euphemism for becoming pregnant outside marriage, and the word came to mean the illegitimate child itself;[2][4][3] the English Dialect Dictionary records this use from Scotland to Somerset.[10] In Somerset misfortune meat was the meat of an animal that had died by accident or had been killed to save it from dying.[10]

Timeline

  • c. 1425 – the verb misfortune, to come to grief (obsolete by 1615).[2]
  • 1441 – noun, bad luck, adverse fortune.[2][8]
  • c. 1485 – an instance of bad luck.[2]
  • 1573 – misfortune personified.[2]
  • 1611 – misfortunes never come singly.[2]
  • 1755 – Johnson defines it as calamity or ill luck.[9]
  • 1756 – have a misfortune, to have a child outside marriage.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Bad luck; adverse fortune: They bore their misfortune without complaint.[11][5][2]
  2. An unlucky or disastrous event; a mishap or calamity: He had the misfortune to lose his keys on the first day.[11][5][2]
  3. (dialect) The birth of a child outside marriage, or the child itself.[5][4][10]

Usage notes

The Century Dictionary, quoted by Etymonline, ranked the words for bad luck: mischance is the mildest, a mishap may be trivial, misfortune is the most general word and denotes something really serious that can befall a person, a family or a nation, and a calamity is a grave misfortune affecting many people.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  8. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  9. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  10. ^ a b c Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins