2022-03-20
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – F - felicitous & fortuitous & fortunate
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Dictionary.com:
ออกเสียง felicitous = “fi-LIS-i-tuhs”
ออกเสียง fortuitous = “fawr-TOO-i-tuhs” or “-TYOO-“
ออกเสียง fortunate = “FAWR-shuh-nit”
Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions:
felicitous & fortuitous & fortunate
Felicitous means “well-suited,”
“apt,”
“appropriate”:
“The speaker’sfelicitous joke put the audience in a jovial mood.”
Fortuitous means “accidental,”
“produced by chance,”
“lucky”:
“Our meeting today on the street is fortuitous.”
“A typical success story is filled withfortuitous events.”
Fortunate means “resulting favorably,”
“having good fortune,”
“auspicious”:
“It is fortunate that you slowed down before reaching the curve.”
Somefortuitous happenings may be both felicitous andfortunate,
but the three words are not usually synonymous.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Choose the Right Synonym for felicitous
Fit, Suitable, Meet, Proper, Appropriate, Fitting, Apt, Happy, Felicitous
mean right with respect to some end, need, use, or circumstance.
Fit stresses adaptability and sometimes special readiness for use or action.
fit for batte
Suitable implies an answering to requirements or demands.
clothes suitable for camping
Meet suggests a just proportioning.
meet payment
Proper suggests a suitability through essential nature or accordance with custom.
proper acknowledgement
Appropriate implies eminent or distinctive fitness.
an appropriate gift
Fitting implies harmony of mood or tone.
a fitting end
Apt connotes a fitness marked by nicety and discrimination.
apt quotations
Happy suggests what is effectively or successfully appropriate.
a happy choice of words
Felicitous suggests an aptness that is opportune, telling, or graceful.
a felicitous phrase
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Did you know?
The adjective felicitous has been a part of our language
since the late 18th century,
but felicity, the noun
meaning "great happiness,"
and later, "aptness," was around even in Middle English
(as felicite, a borrowing from Anglo-French).
Both words ultimately derive from the Latin adjective felix,
meaning "fruitful" or "happy."
The connection between happy and felicitous
continues today in that both words
can mean "notably fitting, effective, or well adapted."
Happy typically suggests what is effectively or successfully
appropriate (as in "a happy choice of words"),
and felicitous often implies
an aptness that is opportune, telling, or graceful
(as in "a felicitous phrase").
Dictionary.com:
WORDS OFTEN CONFUSED WITH FORTUITOUS
Fortuitous has developed in sense
from “happening by chance”
to “happening by lucky chance”
to simply “lucky, fortunate.”
This development was probably
influenced by the similarity of fortuitous
to fortunate and perhaps to felicitous :
A fortuitous late-night snowfall made for a day of great skiing.
Many object to the use of fortuitous to mean simply “fortunate”
and insist that it should be limited to its original sense of “accidental.”
In modern standard use, however, fortuitous almost always
carries the senses both of accident or chance and luck or fortune.
It is infrequently used in its sense of “accidental”
without the suggestion of good luck,
and even lessfrequently in the sense “lucky”
without at least a suggestion of accident or chance:
A fortuitous encounter with a former schoolmate led to
a new and successful career for the artist.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Choose the Right Synonym for fortuitous
Accidental, Fortuitous, Casual, Contingent
mean not amenable to planning or prediction.
Accidental stresses chance.
any resemblance to actual persons is entirely accidental
Fortuitous so strongly suggests chance that it often connotes entire absence of cause.
a series of fortuitous events
Casual stresses lack of real or apparent premeditation or intent.
a casual encounter with a stranger
Contingent suggests possibility of happening
but stresses uncertainty and dependence on
other future events for existence or occurrence.
the contingent effects of the proposed law
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Choose the Right Synonym for fortunate
Lucky, Fortunate, Happy,Providential
mean meeting with unforeseen success.
Lucky stresses the agency of chance
in bringing about a favorable result.
won because of a lucky bounce
Fortunate suggests being rewarded beyond one's deserts.
fortunate in my investments
Happy combines the implications of Lucky and Fortunate
with stress on being blessed.
a series of happy accidents
Providential more definitely implies
the help or intervention of a higher power.
a providential change in the weather
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Did you know?
For some 250 years, until the early part of the 20th century,
"fortuitous" meant one thing only: "happening by chance."
This was no accident;
its Latin forebear, fortuitus, derives from the same ancient root
as the Latin word for "chance," which is "fors."
But the fact that "fortuitous"
sounds like a blend of "fortunate" and "felicitous"
(meaning "happily suited to an occasion")
may have been what ultimately led to a second meaning: "fortunate."
That use has been disparaged by critics,
but it is now well established.
Perhaps the seeds of the newer sense were planted by
earlier writers applying overtones of good fortune
to something that is a chance occurrence.
In fact, today we quite often apply "fortuitous"
to something that is a chance occurrence but has a favorable result.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Usage Notes
Can 'Fortuitous' Mean 'Fortunate'?
When it comes to correct usage, do you feel lucky?
Some usage rules have the power to annoy people
when the rule is not observed;
the adherents to this rule are annoyed
when people do not use the word in the way they think it should be used.
Other usage rules annoy the people
who do not follow the rule;
the rule-breakers think that
people should not tell them how to use some word.
And a few manage to unite these two groups in anger;
both rule-followers and rule-breakers
find the conduct of their counterparts objectionable.
Fortuitous is an excellent example of this.
Fortuitous does not mean fortunate,
It means accidental, happening by chance.
— Paula LaRocque, Championship Writing, 2004
Fortuitous means happening by chance.
It does not mean fortunate.
— The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, 2015
Fortuitous has been in English use for over 400 years now,
and initially (and for several hundred years following)
had a single meaning, which was “occurring by chance.”
This chance did not have to be lucky or fortunate in any way,
and something that was fortuitous could be unpleasant.
In the early 20th century people
began to use fortuitous in a new manner,
which is “happening by a happy chance”
(kind of an ‘accidental,
but with a soupçon of happiness thrown in’ sort of meaning).
Shortly after this the word began to be used to simply mean “fortunate.”
Fortuitous and fortunate do share some of their origins;
both words may be traced back to the Latin fors, meaning “chance.”
It is thought that the initial similarity in spelling
that these two words share,
combined with the fact that fortuitous and
felicitous (“pleasant, delightful”) share an ending,
caused people to assign new meaning to fortuitous.
But if these new senses of the word were formed in error,
and a number of scolding language books
continue to assert that the “fortunate” meanings are wrong,
why is it that we define the word thusly?
The first reason is that ‘people getting things wrong’
is just one of the many ways that language changes;
if we were to refuse to enter all the words
which took on new meaning by people mistaking them
with some other word our dictionary would be considerably smaller.
Another reason is that people have been using fortuitous
to mean both “happening by a lucky chance” and “fortunate”
for a number of decades now,
and these senses have become part of our language.
Our job is to record that language,
and as evidence of current use of fortuitous
being used to mean something other than “occurring by chance”
we can turn to The New York Times, a publication
whose writers seem happily unconcerned
by their own stylebook’s dictum on this word.
It had been one of the most fortuitous marriages in recent college sports:
a proud power brought low by a memorabilia scandal,
matched with a brilliant native son in need of a change of scenery.
— Marc Tracy, The New York Times, 4 Dec. 2018
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Words at Play
Words About Luck
Fortuitous
Originally, fortuitous meant "occurring by chance,"
as in
"Their fortuitous encounter on the train was the beginning of a lifelong friendship."
The word derives from the Latin fortuitus,
a deriviative of fors, the noun meaning "chance" or "luck."
There is nothing specific about good fortune in this sense,
but the fact that fortuitous sounds like both fortunate and felicitous
(meaning "happily suited to an occasion")
likely caused a shift in meaning
to something closer to fortunate ("bringing some unexpected good").
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language:
for·tu′i·tous·ly adv.
for·tu′i·tous·ness n.
Usage Note:
The traditional meaning of fortuitous is
"happening by chance, accidental."
Perhaps because many chance events are favorable
or because of the similarity of fortuitous to fortunate and felicitous,
fortuitous has acquired the meaning
"characterized by good fortune, lucky."
(Note that the word fortunate underwent a similar shift
in meaning centuries ago.)
In our 2005 survey, a solid majority of the Usage Panel accepted
the use of the word to mean "lucky."
Some 68 percent accepted the sentence
The photographer felt that it was very fortuitous that
she was in place to take the winning photo,
where the adverb very
rules out the possibility that the word might mean "accidental."
A similar percentage (67) accepted the sentence
The meeting proved fortuitous:
I came away with a much better idea of my role,
where the verb prove makes the meaning "accidental" an unlikely fit.
This two-thirds majority stands in stark contrast
to the 85 percent that rejected this same sentence in 1967.
Nonetheless, writers should take care to avoid
creating contexts in which the meaning of the word is ambiguous.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary:
for•tu′i•tous•ly, adv.
for•tu′i•tous•ness, n.
usage:
fortuitous has developed in sense from “happening by chance”
to “happening by lucky chance”
to simply “lucky.”
Some object to this last meaning,
insisting that fortuitous be kept to its original sense of “accidental.”
In modern standard use, however,
the word almost always carries the senses
both of chance and good luck.
fortuitous is infrequently used to mean “accidental”
without the suggestion of good luck,
and even less frequently to mean “lucky”
without a suggestion of accident or chance.
