Word.ws English Dictionary

infortunate

infortunate adjective: unfortunate, unlucky.

Adjective

infortunate (comparative more infortunate, superlative most infortunate)

  1. (obsolete) Unfortunate, unlucky.
    • Henry, though he be infortunate1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
    • That infortunate imperfit Embrion of my idle houres the Ile of Dogs before mentioned, breeding vnto me ſuch bitter throwes in the teaming as it did, and the tempeſtes that aroſe at his birth, ſo aſtoniſhing outragious and violent as if my braine had bene conceiued of another Hercules, I was ſo...1599, [Thomas] Nashe, Nashes Lenten Stuffe, […], London: […] [Thomas Judson and Valentine Simmes] for N[icholas] L[ing] and C[uthbert] B[urby] […], →OCLC, page 2
  2. (obsolete) (of a star, planet, etc.) Bringing bad luck, causing misfortune, malevolent.
  3. (broadly, obsolete) Ominous, inauspicious.

Noun

infortunate (plural infortunates)

  1. (obsolete) An unfortunate.
  2. (obsolete) An 'unfortunate' planet, star, etc.

Verb

infortunate (third-person singular simple present infortunates, present participle infortunating, simple past and past participle infortunated)

  1. (ambitransitive, obsolete) To subject a person to a, or cause a celestial body to be of malevolent influence; to render 'infortunate'.

Forms of infortunate

Adjective
comparativemore infortunate
superlativemost infortunate
Noun
pluralinfortunates
Verb
third-person singular presentinfortunates
present participleinfortunating
past participleinfortunated
pastinfortunated

Origin of infortunate

The adjective is first attested circa 1390, in Middle English, the verb in 1570; inherited from Middle English infortunat(e), borrowed from Latin infortūnātus, see -ate (etymology 1, 2 and 3). Doublet of unfortunate.

Questions about infortunate

What does infortunate mean?
Infortunate means unfortunate, unlucky.
What part of speech is infortunate?
Infortunate can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.

Words near infortunate in the dictionary

  1. informs
  2. informs on
  3. informulable
  4. INFORSE
  5. infortitude
  6. infortunate
  7. infortune
  8. infortunes
  9. infortunity
  10. infoscape
  11. infoscapes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: infortunate (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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