Word Says HiWords travel further

serendipity

ˌser-ən-ˈdi-pə-tē

A word coined by Horace Walpole in 1754 takes its name from a Persian fairy tale.

Try serendipity in the lookup

Fills the word field on the homepage. Nothing is sent until you submit.

Open blank book with a blue moth and small gold key on the page, framed by white flowers.
Decorative illustration

One possible route

The sequence below follows the cited Merriam-Webster entry.

A word routeLanguage forms named in the cited Merriam-Webster entry
  1. Persian and ArabicSarandība name for Sri Lanka
  2. Persian taleSerendipthe princes' homeland in the title
  3. EnglishSerendip + -itycoined by Horace Walpole in a letter1754
  4. Englishserendipityfirst known use (Merriam-Webster)1754

A discovery hidden in a story

Horace Walpole coined serendipity in a letter dated January 28, 1754 — the first known use Merriam-Webster records — naming it after The Three Princes of Serendip, a Persian fairy tale whose heroes kept “making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.” The letter was apparently not published until 1833, so the word had a documented birth long before it had a public life.

This page summarizes the cited dictionary entries. Follow each source for its full wording, notes and references.

More from the cited entries

Word-specific details from the linked dictionaries, with the dictionary named beside each claim.

Accidents and sagacity

Walpole's own definition, quoted by the Online Etymology Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary alike, pairs two things: accidents and sagacity. Serendipity is the faculty of making happy discoveries you were not looking for — the sagacity is the noticing. That is a narrower claim than “pure luck,” and it is the one the coiner's letter actually supports.

AHD's word history adds the texture: Walpole called his source “a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip,” while still drawing the name from it, and described his knack for finds as a kind of “talisman.”

What Serendip was

Serendip — also Serendib — was an old name for Ceylon, modern Sri Lanka, attested in English by 1708. The dictionaries run it from Arabic Sarandīb back to Sanskrit Siṃhaladvīpa, “Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island”; the American Heritage Dictionary parses it as Siṃhalaḥ, Sri Lanka, plus dvīpaḥ, island.

The tale was already in circulation when Walpole wrote: an English version of The Three Princes of Serendip was published in 1722, more than thirty years before his letter. So the word is an 18th-century coinage built on an older name — not an old borrowing dressed up as one.

A slow public life

The Online Etymology Dictionary tracks the word's long obscurity: rare before the 20th century, remarked on in an 1877 Saturday Review article that said the world had probably almost forgotten Walpole's coinage, turning up in print from the 1890s, and still absent from the Century Dictionary in 1902. The adjective serendipitous is recorded from 1914.

That record is a useful limit on the usual story: “Walpole invented it” is documented, but “it caught on” took another century and a half.

Keep following words

Continue with another source-linked example.

All ten examples
Diagonally cut sandwich with greens and tomato on a pale ceramic plate.2 route stepssandwichAn English food word is named for John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich — though the card-table story is a later anecdote.Earl of SandwichsandwichOpen blank book beside stacked navy and green books, a graphite pencil, and a leafy sprig.5 route stepsschoolGreek scholē began with leisure, discussion and learning before the word reached English — while a different word entirely gave us schools of fish.scholēschoolWooden counting beads in a grid beside bronze dividers and geometric tiles.4 route stepsalgorithmThe name of a ninth-century mathematician passed through medieval Latin into a modern technical word.al-Khwārizmīalgorithm