Misfortune is bad luck or an unlucky event that causes problems or unhappiness. When a family faces the misfortune of a house fire, or when an athlete suffers the misfortune of an injury right before a big game, something difficult and unwanted has happened to them through no real fault of their own.

Misfortune is different from the consequences of poor choices. If you forget to study and fail a test, that's a predictable result of your decision. But if your pencil breaks during the test, your backup pencil rolls under a desk you can't reach, and then the power goes out, that string of unlucky events would be misfortune.

People sometimes say “misfortunes never come singly,” meaning that bad luck can seem to pile up. The word reminds us that life includes random difficulties we can't control or predict. A misfortune might be minor, like missing the bus on a rainy day, or serious, like a sudden illness in the family.