Serendipity

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˌsɛɹ.ənˈdɪp.ɪ.ti/

Definitions

  1. The occurrence of finding something good or valuable by chance rather than through deliberate searching or planning
  2. The fortunate discovery of something desirable through happy accident rather than intentional effort
  3. Finding valuable or beneficial things unexpectedly when not specifically looking for them

Etymology: Serendipity is a relatively modern English coinage, but one with an unusually literary origin. The word was invented by Horace Walpole, the 18th-century English author and politician, who created it in 1754 in a letter to Horace Mann. Walpole based his neologism on "Serendip," an old name for Sri Lanka (derived from Sanskrit "Siṃhaladvīpa," meaning "island of the Sinhalese"). He had recently read a Persian fairy tale called "The Three Princes of Serendip," which tells of three princes who are always making discoveries of things they were not seeking. The tale appealed to Walpole as a perfect illustration of the phenomenon he wanted to name. Walpole's coinage remained largely confined to literary and intellectual circles for over a century. The word did not achieve widespread currency until the 20th century, when it began appearing in popular writing and eventually entered general usage. By the mid-1900s, it had become a standard English word used to describe the occurrence of happy or beneficial discoveries by chance—the very quality that Walpole had identified in the Persian princes' adventures. The word's journey from a private letter to common parlance reflects both the power of a well-chosen term and the influence of literary culture on English vocabulary. Unlike most English words, which inherit their forms from Old English, Latin, French, or Greek roots, serendipity represents a conscious artistic creation that captured something in the modern imagination. Its success demonstrates that entirely new words can enter the language when they fill a conceptual gap and when they are championed by influential voices. Today, serendipity remains a distinctly English word, rarely adopted unchanged into other languages, which instead tend to create their own descriptive phrases for the same idea.

Synonyms: chance, fluke, fortune

Antonyms: misfortune, bad luck