Word.ws English Dictionary

hostages to fortune

hostages to fortune noun: a man's wife, children, etc.

Noun

hostages to fortune pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) A man's wife, children, etc.
    • Stay home, keep house for my three newest hostages to fortune, and write while I waited for my modest pensions to kick in.2004, Larry L. Meyer, No Paltry Thing: Memoirs of a Geezer Dad, page 26

Questions about hostages to fortune

What does hostages to fortune mean?
Hostages to fortune means a man's wife, children, etc.
What part of speech is hostages to fortune?
Hostages to fortune is a noun.

Words near hostages to fortune in the dictionary

  1. hostaged
  2. hostagehood
  3. hostager
  4. hostagers
  5. hostages
  6. hostages to fortune
  7. hostageship
  8. hostageships
  9. hostaging
  10. hostas
  11. hosted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hostages to fortune (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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