Learn English – The meaning of ‘changing fortunes’

meaning-in-contextphrase-meaning

I have a piece of exercise requesting me to make sentences about a businessman's changing fortunes. There are some of these sentences:

Alexander won a small fortune in a casino when his luck was good.
Alexander lost a fortune in a business that went bankrupt.

I think that the two fortune in these two sentences mean an amount of money, but I don't think fortunes means amounts of money in the phrase changing fortunes. I've seen a lot of news' titles contain changing fortunes and there are even a book named this phrase. What does it mean in the request of my homework?

Best Answer

You're correct to think that lost a fortune and a small fortune are referring to wealth.

Changing fortune refers to the following definition:

The success or failure of a person or enterprise over a period of time.

Therefore, by changing their fortunes, the person or business is changing the successfulness of their business. I don't think I've ever seen it used to mean decrease the successfulness, it usually implies a positive result.

Related Topic