Hello! Did you just happen to discover this blog from a random search or unintended click-through from another site? What a fortunate accident! In fact, you might even say it was serendipity that got you here. The noun serendipity means an unplanned occurrence, discovery, or experience that brings you good fortune or benefits you in some way. This word was coined by the British author and politician Horace Walpole in 1754, based on an ancient Persian fairy tale about the three lucky princes of Serendip, which is the old Arabic name for present-day Sri Lanka.

Serendipity is often used to describe a lucky discovery of one thing that you find while you’re looking for something else entirely. For example, a person might be walking along a mountain stream, fishing for trout, and suddenly look down to see a nugget of gold. In fact, that’s more or less how the California Gold Rush started in 1848 in California – a man was building a lumber mill on the bank of a river (which was to be powered by a water wheel) and happened to find several small gold nuggets near the building site.

Several modern inventions came about by serendipity, including the nonstick coating Teflon (the inventor was trying to develop a gas to be used in refrigeration), the sugar substitute aspartame (the scientist was experimenting with anti-ulcer drugs), and the microwave oven (invented by a scientist who found a melted candy bar in his pocket after a session of working with radar waves in the laboratory).

Example: If my friend Libby hadn’t decided to get to work early, she wouldn’t have been stuck in the elevator with Charles, who was there to pack up his desk and move to his new job across the city, and they might never have met. It was pure serendipity that they got to know each other, and now they’ve been married for fourteen years.

Related words include the adjective serendipitous and the adverb serendipitously. Happenstance is a synonym sometimes used for serendipity, and the phrase a stroke of luck is also common.

Now that you’ve found us, be sure to bookmark this page and check back soon for our next word-related post!