Serendip

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. A lucky find or happy accident that occurs when seeking something else entirely
2. An occurrence where someone discovers something valuable or delightful without having looked for it
3. A chance encounter or unexpected stroke of good fortune that results in a beneficial outcome

Etymology: "Serendip" is an older form of "Serendib," the Arabic name for Sri Lanka, and it came into English through a Persian route. The Sanskrit name "siṃhaladvīpa" meant "island of the Sinhala people," joining "siṃhala," the name of the island's people, with "dvīpa," meaning "island." Prakrit forms of this name passed into Persian as "sarandip," and Arabic speakers then adapted it as "sarandīb," which is the form that reached English as "Serendib." The name's ancient ancestry is far from the English word's modern meaning. Sri Lanka's Sinhalese name, "Siṃhala," itself appears in the Sanskrit compound, so the island was already called "island of the Sinhala" long before any European traveller wrote about it. The name survived in Persian and Arabic geographical writing for centuries, and it is from that tradition that the word gradually found its way into European languages.