make a fortune

Idioms and Phrases

Also, make a small fortune . Earn a great deal of money, as in He made a fortune on the stock market . Similar expressions are be worth a fortune or small fortune , as in Now that their parents have died, they're worth a small fortune . Make a fortune dates from about 1700, and its use with small from the second half of the 1800s.

Example Sentences

Jim Simons, a math prodigy who gave up an academic career to make a fortune with the world’s first quantitative investing firm, died last week at the age of 86 at his home in New York City after a battle with lung cancer.

From Science Magazine

“All the air is getting sucked out of the room by these for-profit companies who say, ‘Wow, this stuff is awesome, if I could patent it I’d make a fortune.’”

From Seattle Times

The publisher was founded by Alexander Grosset, a shy Scotsman who teamed up with George Dunlap, a gregarious Pennsylvania transplant, to raise $1,000 in order to establish a hardcover reprint house that would make a fortune peddling the likes of Rudyard Kipling and Zane Grey before taking aim at the burgeoning children’s literature marketplace.

From Salon

In retrospect it was a perfect pitch for cryptocurrency speculators who wanted to believe that they, too, could make a fortune without any traditional financial background or connections.

From New York Times

They make a fortune per head smuggling migrants, including children, for the sex and slave trade.

From Washington Times

Related Words

• accomplish
• achieve
• benefit
• flourish
• gain
• get
• overcome
• prevail
• prosper
• realize
• thrive
• triumph
• win