Adventure is an exciting, often risky experience; venture is a bold undertaking, especially a business one, and can also be a verb meaning to dare to go or say something. If you are pitching investors, you have a business venture; if you are backpacking across a continent, you are having an adventure.
The core difference
Adventure is about the exciting experience itself; venture is about the risky undertaking, particularly in a commercial sense.
- venture — a risky or bold undertaking, or to dare to go or do something: the two friends launched a new business venture together.
- adventure — an exciting or unusual experience involving risk or the unknown: backpacking across South America was the adventure of a lifetime.
How to tell them apart
Venture is actually a shortened form of adventure, worn down by everyday use over the centuries, so the two share the same root even though they now lean in different directions. Adventure keeps the sense of excitement and discovery, while venture narrowed towards risk-taking, especially the financial kind: a joint venture, a venture capitalist, a new venture.
Both words also work as verbs. To adventure into something is simply to take a risk by trying it, while to venture is to dare to go somewhere or say something, as in venturing a guess. If in doubt, ask whether the sentence is about the thrill of an experience (adventure) or the risk of an undertaking (venture).
