Did you by any chance mean semblant?
Definitions
Sorry, no definitions found.
Examples
“Newton Scherl of Englewood, New Jersey, writes, “I have tried without success to find zemblanity in any of my dictionaries.””
Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
“Ergo: zemblanity, the opposite of serendipity, the faculty of making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries by design.”
Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
“From agathism (the doctrine that all things tend towards ultimate good) to zemblanity (the opposite of serendipity), he offers definitions, etymology and quotes.”
“A Times Book Review note about the novel Armadillo, by William Boyd, reads, “The novel’s hero … is undone by an outbreak of zemblanity, the opposite of serendipity, in the multicultural hubbub of Cool Britannia.””
Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
“Now this site of testing of non-nuclear explosives at a nuclear facility has given birth to zemblanity, the inexorable discovery of what we don’t want to know.”
Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘zemblanity’.
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Things that Can (and Should) be set O...
The words piano and sister may not appear on this list. It all started on flaming piano.
bottled water, dudley moore, wads of unpaid bills, casu marzu factories, pogroms, frozen pizzas, breakable glass f..., cacophonists, intransigents, belligerent smurfs, police academy re..., unidentified samp... and 103 more...
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Lachrymose Words
bubulcitate, dysphoric, dacryolin, anhedonia, algesia, scrofula, shtum, zemblanity, planxty, pleonexia, felo-de-se, brumal and 5 more...
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Words that should be heard in songs m...
Inspired by PossibleUnderscore's list of words overused in modern pop music.
giant squid, bamboo, colonic, herbivore, raptor, dodecahedron, largesse, sinuses, dim sum, carburetor, transubstantiation, wife and 54 more...
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A Salpicon of Random Palavery
More random words and phrases that reflect my eclectic, stream-of-consciousess style of word and idea gathering.
durometer, mock-grudge, nimini-pimini, chrisom, sine metu, monteverdian, tagh, monodic, sharakan, watermen, wherrymen, winged gudgeon and 137 more...
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cowsofoblivion's list
phantasmagoric, vicambulist, cunctator, octothorpe, quietus, zemblanity, glandular, portmanteau
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Awesome Words, Part 1: Less Common
These are words that I have learnt over the years and want to remember
epithalamium, hustings, verger, atheling, moue, pendulous, pendragon, funicular, pericope, fettle, eleemosynary, moot and 160 more...
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beatricks's Words
tremendous, naiad, thrush, samsara, thronging, nascent, broom, aristeia, streak, susurrant, reverberate, resistentialism and 352 more...
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It Has a Name??
Yes. Yes it does.
aglet, armsaye, scroop, rowel, ferrule, rasceta, chanking, philtrum, frenulum, keeper, agelast, punt and 285 more...
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epeolatrist's list
epeolatry, syzygy, sphallolalia, lucubration, lugubrious, cacology, mellifluous, tmesis, synecdoche, anathema, eschatological, razbliuto and 349 more...
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Predictionary
EXPECTED vs. SURPRISE
aberration, exception, spontaneous, synchronicity, startle, waylay, prophecy, zemblanity, inadvertent, atavism, sui generis, anomaly and 127 more...
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cdrea's list
random for fun
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Lessons of Wordie / Wordnik
Words and concepts I learned on Wordie, or happened upon as I roamed through dictionaries and websites seeking ammunition.
usquebaugh, baugh, plunderbunny, plinthiform, hendiatris, buckjumper, peripetia, trenchmore, antifogmatic, felon, whitlow, paronychia and 152 more...
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bloodworm's list
These are words that I enjoy because they are unique, rare, long, or just cool.
circumlocution, hysteresis, schadenfreude, quixotic, loquacious, ennui, sesquipedalian, defenestrate, obfuscate, syzygy, ubiquitous, superfluous and 231 more...
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Words to have topped the "most wordie...
confelicity, bristol stool scale, blatteroon, toejam, serendipity, oubliette, crepuscular, honeysuckle, mellifluous, sesquipedalian, flaberkin, magnanimous and 141 more...
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ifjuly's list
favorite words. some are made up injokes between me and my husband or family.
skein, zaftig, july, bed, orifice, aesthete, ink, parce-que, desormais, cake, pusillanimous, pulse and 531 more...
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2008 Wordlist
Hopefully, I'll be using this site for more than one year. It will be fun then to look back and see what new words I found worthy of notice in any given year.
All words spotted in 2008...longanimity, permalancer, breeder, biodegradable, handicapable, gender-neutral, translator, interpreter, translation, interpreting, kleptocracy, fanfiction and 1598 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for zemblanity.
matthewsouther To name the world's precipitous
affliction of humanity,
I find it serendipitous
to chance upon "zemblanity". Jun 14, 2009
smeggo What doesn't kill me makes me increasingly disappointed. Oct 10, 2008
rolig The arctic island is actually called Novaya Zemlya, which in Russian simply means "New Land." "Nova Zembla" represents an older Dutch, and then English, mispronunciation. So "zemblanity" (a word I like, actually) was itself born of a mistake. How appropriate. May 5, 2008
orarian The opposite of serendipity, the faculty of making unhappy, unlucky and unexpected discoveries by design; the inexorable discovery of what we don't what to know. Word derived from Zembla, an barren, frigid Artic island -- Nova Zembla -- the site of a nuclear facility now used for testing non-nuclear explosives.
-Peter Bowler May 5, 2008