These words refer to a situation or outcome as though it were fixed or predetermined. Destiny is the most general and lease specific of these. It can suggest an occult prearrangement of the future: No man can escape his destiny . At the other extreme, it can refer simply to a result without suggesting any forces at work beyond cause and effect: Parliament meeting to decide the destiny of the abortion reform law. Fate , by contrast, is much stronger in implications of a deterministic pattern. Where destiny might point to a desired goal without rejecting the notion of free will, fate points to an outcome, good or bad, as though choice, chance or cause and effect played no part in its working out: Oriental religions that advise man to accept his fate without bitterness. Even when weakened by use to refer merely to result the word often suggests an unpleasant outcome: mountain-climbers who met a disastrous fate .

Fortune suggests a future determined by luck or chance. By contrast with fate , it often indicates good luck or a pleasant outcome, especially when personified: hoping that fortune would smile on their efforts. A related use refers to a favourable future goal towards which one can work or struggle: going off to seek wealth and fortune . Lot once suggested a fate or fortune that befell one by chance; now, however, it refers mainly to one’s station in life, however, arrived at: peasants whose lot in life was hard and bitter; each person must learn how to bear his lot .