Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth 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.
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.
Wiktionary
- 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.
WordNet 3.0
- n. good luck in making unexpected and fortunate discoveries
Etymologies
- Serendip + -ity. Coined by Horace Walpole, 1754. See Serendib. (Wiktionary)
- 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)
Examples
“The word serendipity comes from the Persian fairy tale”
The Huffington Post: Kari Stoever: 720 Saturdays and a Silver Dollar
“On January 28, 1754, Horace Walpole coined the term serendipity, which means finding something you're not looking for but which you nonetheless need.”
“The word "serendipity" comes from the Persian fairy tale "The Three Princes of Serendip," whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”
The Huffington Post: Kari Stoever: 720 Saturdays and a Silver Dollar
“Put another, metaphorical way, American writers tend toward an expressive register commensurate with the open spaces and endless distances of our continent; Perec's magnitude is no less great, but his vastness is essentially urban, highly structured, and by necessity constrained, entailing complex negotiations and yielding delight in serendipity, surprise, and incongruity.”
“Cooperation with other more northerly atmospheric weather patterns or oscillations and a little serendipity is needed to get an exceptionally snowy winter.”
“The accidental discovery of a new idea is called serendipity.”
“Not to actually equate Alberta's avarice in serendipity with slavery, of course.”
“Sometimes serendipity is a factor in the projects I pick.”
“You can read Chapter 1 of The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: A Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science, by Robert K. Merton and Elinor Barber, here From the names of cruise lines and bookstores to an Australian ranch and a nudist camp outside of Atlanta, the word serendipity—that happy blend of wisdom and luck by which something is discovered not quite by accident—is today ubiquitous.”
“This was also my first exercise in serendipity, (the art of looking for something and finding something else), because I was not after a mercury lamp but after a cadmium lamp, and that was not a success.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘serendipity’.
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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Familiar
Just a list of words
fulminate, unctuous, malediction, lumpenproletariat, descry, surfeit, sententious, supernumerary, unabashed, picayune, obliterate, decry and 109 more...
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goodkitten's list
there is going to be a lot of words...
flammivomous, pep, electrolyzation, research, constrain, why, refrigerator, invisible, windblown, curate's egg, echoism, drumble and 103 more...
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From reading
Collected from reading
venerate, reprobate, reticent, adoration, ethereal, ephemeral, equivocal, contumacious, heinous, solicitous, agnostic, aberration and 335 more...
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beautiful words
phantasmagoric, basorexia, sapiosexual, nomophobia, procrastination, resuscitate, onomatopoeia, serendipity, cataglottism, parochial, humbug, spelunking
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Vocabulary 2
peril, precinct, embolden, trepidation, glean, quorum, laud, leap, leery, fumble, repertory, serendipity and 3 more...
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PART 2: 100 Word You Should Know To B...
Here are 40 advanced English words which should you be able to use them in a sentence will impress even educated native speakers! Perfect if you want to impress the examiner in examinations like: I...
jubilant, knell, lithe, lurid, maverick, maxim, meticulous, modicum, morose, myriad, nadir, nominal and 28 more...
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Creative List
Words that evoke creativity
creativity, accidental, serendipity, chance, innocence, child, imagination, intuition, Steve jobs, Michaelangelo, Bach, Escher and 28 more...
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Words that make my mouth happy
epiphany, serendipity, beloved, treasure, cherish, precious, angelic, etherial, surreal, charm, mystical, wysteria and 1 more...
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filter
strain rain, porous apour, per-meate, extravasate, glomerulus, percolate, per-collate, bitumastic, passband, Proxomitron, reredos, sporgery and 27 more...
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Smile Words
Just a list of words that make me happy in some little way.
barathum, serendipity, magic, impartial, magnanimous, Agrabah, indefatigable, commonplace, toast, fastidious, pedantic, eccentric
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Lexicomaniac
cicatrix, ingeminate, durcheinander, crêpe, soporific, papaverous, archaic, enucleate, falchion, gravitic, pseudorandom, thorp and 10 more...
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Words For Novel
viridity, effigy, paragon, congested, acrid, lilting, clandestine, plethora, accolade, sardonic, naïve, reckoning and 285 more...
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Twitter faves
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
niglets, aw, flakey, shiznit, thatch, sexy, bummers, hotty, eargasms, ratchetry, weird, fab and 457 more... -
GRE Reference
A list of words unfamiliar to me that I have repeatedly encountered in GRE question sets.
parochial, clique, salacious, aegis, ostracize, conceited, sacrilegious, inane, serendipity, gourmand, polemic, tenuous and 138 more...
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Reading Vocab
ulterior, warrant, syllogism, precious, impiety, maroon, aigrette, batiste, topsy-turvy ago, midnight crush, cantankerous, slovenly and 180 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for serendipity.

mattaustin I found this word in an article called "Three days in the Sri Lanka", by Nathan Myers. It is used in the sentence as followed, "Sri Lanka in Arabic is called serendib meaning serendipity." Sep 22, 2010
gangerh It would be an unexpected stroke of luck to find that 103 other Wordies listed this word for the first time today before a certain other word was listed again. Sep 15, 2009
tonybreed It looks like all of the "how it's used" examples are taken from the 1999 movie "Dogma", where Serendipity was the name of Salma Hayak's character. Unfortunately, this give no sense of how the word is used.
Mar 26, 2009
milosrdenstvi The opposite being zemblanity. Mar 17, 2009
Telofy Bodhi, serendipity is our Lucksmith. Oct 13, 2008
bodhi Ohmygod this word is so foul. So sticky. Ugh. Oct 13, 2008
kewpid Oh wait, never mind, I've worked it out Jun 16, 2008
kewpid What's the not-nice one, bilb? Jun 16, 2008
bilby The nice s-word. Jun 16, 2008
languageandhumor If "The Three Princes of Serendip" had been written much later, John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale could have starred in "Ceylonity" or even "Srilankanity." Feb 25, 2008
pxsarkany I recall it was because the Brothers from Serendip always got lucky, because they were in the right place at the right time.
Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Princes_of_Serendip, it's really cool Nov 23, 2007
muamor We have absolutely nothing like that in Finnish. Life moves in serendipitous ways. Which is good. Jun 25, 2007
copywriter Oh, how I wonder how popular this word is... Feb 19, 2007
haguremetaru Like the mooV
Dec 9, 2006
dbmag9 Why are the forces for the universe set the way they are? Why am I so happy? Why did I catch the train today? Some will say that these are merely coincidences that had to happen to somebody. But others will reply: Yes, but they didn't have to happen to us. That there is so much happiness in our world; that we have these little, fortuitous, coincidences; truly, we have serendipity. Dec 2, 2006
seanahan Like the island. Dec 2, 2006