fortune hunter

See also: fortune-hunter

English

Alternative forms

Noun

fortune hunter (plural fortune hunters)

  1. A person who eagerly seeks wealth without working to earn it, especially in an adventurous way or in an unsavory or unscrupulous way such as through marriage.
    • 1766, Oliver Goldsmith, chapter 5, in The Vicar of Wakefield:
      "There is no character more contemptible than a man that is a fortune-hunter, and I can see no reason why fortune-hunting women should not be contemptible too."
    • c. 1802, Maria Edgeworth, "Almeria" From Tales and Novels, Volume V:
      [H]e did not know of what use money could be to a woman, except to make her a prey to a fortune-hunter.
    • 1841, Charles Dickens, chapter 15, in Barnaby Rudge:
      "The stock-exchange, the pulpit, the counting-house, the royal drawing-room, the senate,—what but fortune-hunters are they filled with?"
    • 1916, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 5, in Uneasy Money:
      She pictured him as a crafty adventurer, a wretched fortune-hunter.
    • 1998 Jan. 25, Matthew Sweet, "Cinema: Kate Winslet: the sinking man's crumpet" (film review of Titanic), The Independent (UK) (retrieved 6 June 2014):
      101-year-old Rose (Gloria Stuart) returns to the scene of waterlogged hubris, where fortune hunter Lovett (Bill Paxton) is diving for diamonds.
    • 2009 Nov. 6, Seth Schiesel, "Video Game Review: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves," New York Times (retrieved 6 June 2014):
      [T]he swashbuckling modern-day fortune hunter Nathan Drake treks from Istanbul to Borneo to the highest peaks of the Himalayas in search of the lost treasures of the mystical Shambhala.

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