# World of the word: serendipity

## Pronunciations

# serendipity

## Definitions

### from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

- n. The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.
- n. The fact or occurrence of such discoveries.
- n. An instance of making such a discovery.

### from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

- n. An unsought, unintended, and/or unexpected discovery and/or learning experience that happens by accident and sagacity.
- n. A combination of events which are not individually beneficial, but occurring together produce a good or wonderful outcome.

### from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

- n. The happy faculty, or luck, of finding, by “accidental sagacity,” interesting items of information or unexpected proofs of one's theories; discovery of things unsought: a factitious word humorously invented by Horace Walpole.

### from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

- n. good luck in making unexpected and fortunate discoveries

## Etymologies

From the characters in the Persian fairy tale _The Three Princes of Serendip_, who made such discoveries, from Persian _Sarandīp_, _Sri Lanka_, from Arabic _sarandīb_.

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

_Serendip_ +‎ _-ity_. Coined by Horace Walpole, 1754. See _Serendib_.

## Same context

|     |     |     |     |     |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 5-speed | Bushman | bimbo | coagulant | cussedness |
| finnesko | fuckery | guesswork | inlight | isolinear |
| lotus-flower | mortician | nonexecution | normalcy | palinode |
| perform | rollout | teardown | usethe |

## Tags

|     |     |     |     |     |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| chance | fun | serendipity | madeupical | fun to say |
| gloriousness | persia | favorite | interesting origin | beautiful movements |
| cvcvccvcvcv | fate | -ity |