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Origin and history of serendipity

serendipity(n.)

"faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries," a rare word before 20c., coined by Horace Walpole in a letter to Horace Mann that is dated Jan. 28, 1754, but which apparently was not published until 1833.

Walpole said he formed the word from the Persian fairy tale "The Three Princes of Serendip" (an English version was published in 1722) whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of" [Walpole].

Serendip (also Serendib), attested by 1708 in English, is an old name for Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), from Arabic Sarandib, from Sanskrit Simhaladvipa "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island."

Attention was called to the word in an article in The Saturday Review of June 16, 1877 ["An ungrateful world has probably almost forgotten Horace Walpole's attempt to enrich the English language with the term "Serendipity." etc.]; it begins to turn up in publication 1890s but still is not in Century Dictionary in 1902.

also from 20c.

Entries linking to serendipity

Sri Lanka

large island southeast of India (known in English before 1972 as Ceylon), from Lanka, older name for the island and its chief city, + Sanskrit sri "beauty" (used especially of divinities, kings, heroes, etc.), also an honorific prefix to proper names, from PIE root *kreie- "to be outstanding, brilliant, masterly, beautiful," found in Greek (kreon "lord, master") and Indo-Iranian. Related: Sri Lankan.

serendipitous(adj.)

of discoveries, etc., "made or done by happy accident, unexpected," 1914; see serendipity + -ous. Related: Serendipitously.

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