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fate

/feɪt/noun, verb

fate is a noun meaning “The presumed cause, force, principle, or divine will that predetermines events” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-A-T-E and has one syllable, and it appears 23 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of fate is fates.

What does fate mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The presumed cause, force, principle, or divine will that predetermines events.

  2. 2

    The effect, consequence, outcome, or inevitable events predetermined by this cause.

  3. 3

    An event or a situation which is inevitable in the fullness of time.

  4. 4

    Destiny; often with a connotation of death, ruin, misfortune, etc.

    Accept your fate.

  5. 5

    Alternative letter-case form of Fate (one of the goddesses said to control the destiny of human beings).

  6. 6

    The products of a chemical reaction in their final form in the biosphere.

  7. 7

    The mature endpoint of a region, group of cells or individual cell in an embryo, including all changes leading to that mature endpoint

verb

  1. 1

    To foreordain or predetermine, to make inevitable.

    The oracle's prediction fated Oedipus to kill his father; not all his striving could change what would occur.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce fate?

  • /feɪt/

Fate has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-fate.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of fate

  • fates plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • fating participle, present
  • fated participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is fate?

Fate appears 23 times per million words in written English, the 3,875th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Words people confuse with fate

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

fate vs fete0 B

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Fate in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchdestin, destinée, sort (that which predetermines events)
GermanSchicksal, Los, Geschick (that which predetermines events)
Portuguesedestino, fado, sina (that which predetermines events)
Spanishazar, hado, fátum (that which predetermines events), sino (inevitable events)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does fate come from?

From Middle English fate, from Latin fāta (“prediction”), plural of fātum, from fātus (“spoken”), from for (“to speak”). In this sense, displaced native Old English wyrd, whence Modern English weird.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).