‘Try the sports pages,’ said my husband, stirring in his armchair. I was looking for examples of fortuitous used as though it meant ‘fortunate’. You and I know that it means ‘produced by chance’, and it seems a pity to lose the distinction.
The sports pages were indeed thronged with fortuitous. Football, it seems, is a game of chance. It didn’t take long to get a writer in the Daily Mail bang to rights. ‘Only occasionally will you get lucky. Arsenal did ride their luck to down Klopp’s team in London towards the end of last season but may have to wait a while to be so fortuitous again.’
There it must have been intended to mean ‘fortunate’. Of course fortune may be bad, though lucky and fortunate tend to mean good luck and fortune. The verbal roots of fortuitous and fortune intertwine, but the ancient Romans used fortuitus in just the random sense we do.
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