# serendipity

Pronunciation: say "ser-uhn-DIP-i-tee" /ˌsɛɹ.ənˈdɪp.ɪ.ti/

## Noun

1. The happy chance of things turning out well by accident, especially of finding something good or useful when not looking for it; also, an instance of such luck.
   - Simple: Good luck that comes by chance, like finding something good or useful when you were not looking for it.
   - _It was serendipity that the two founders were seated next to each other on that flight._
   - _A string of serendipities brought the band together: a missed bus, a borrowed guitar, and an open-mic night._

## Origin

Horace Walpole, the English writer and politician, made up the word in 1754 from Serendip (a variant of Serendib, an old name for Ceylon, now Sri Lanka) plus -ity. He based it on the Persian tale The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes, he explained in a letter to a friend, kept finding things they were not looking for, through accident and shrewdness.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/serendipity (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).