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make a fortune

make a fortune idiom

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.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.