Word of the Day: SERENDIPITY

How fortunate and unexpected!

serendipity (noun) - the act or ability to find valuable or agreeable things accidentally; unexpected good fortune

• serendipitous means occurring or obtained by chance in a happy or fortunate way; unexpected; fortuitous

• a serendipitist is someone who frequently experiences good luck or stumbles upon unexpected opportunities or advantages

BREAKDOWN: The word serendipity is toponymic, meaning it derives from the name of a place. Actually, the word comes from a story about particular people from a place, in this case the Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. This story (read the beginning here) was translated into Italian in 1557 as Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo, and then into French and then, fortunately, into English. Writer and politician Horace Walpole wasn’t involved in the translation of the story but proposed the word serendipity as a reference to the story’s theme of the princes “making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”

Serendip is actually the Persian or Arabic name for what is now called Sri Lanka.

“Risk-taking, trust, and serendipity are key ingredients of joy. Without risk, nothing new ever happens. Without trust, fear creeps in. Without serendipity, there are no surprises.” —Rita Gelman

[Our Wednesday Wildcards are fascinating and important words that are not necessarily derived from classical roots.]