serendipity / zemblanity
Feb. 11th, 2013 07:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordTime for another doublets week, starting off with:
serendipity (ser-uhn-DIP-i-tee) n., an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident; an instance of such a discovery.
zemblanity (zem-BLA-ni-tee) - n., the faculty of making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries by design.
The former was coined in 1754 by novelist Horace Walpole after the heroes of a Persian fairy tale called The Three Princes of Serendip, who "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of" -- Serendip being a name of what's now called Sri Lanka, from Arabic Sarandib, from Sanskrit Simhaladvipa "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island." It is sometimes loosely used as a synonym for good luck, but current usage in science emphasizes the sense of finding one thing when looking for something else. Zemblanity was coined in 1998 by novelist William Boyd as its direct opposite, after the Arctic island group Novaya Zemlya, sometimes Englished as Nova Zembla. It hasn't really caught on yet, despite appearing in columns and essays about words, but I'm sure all of us here will do our part to help it along. "She told herself she was just being paranoid when came home to check on her husband, but indeed she had the zemblanity to found him in bed with the pool boy."
---L.
serendipity (ser-uhn-DIP-i-tee) n., an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident; an instance of such a discovery.
zemblanity (zem-BLA-ni-tee) - n., the faculty of making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries by design.
The former was coined in 1754 by novelist Horace Walpole after the heroes of a Persian fairy tale called The Three Princes of Serendip, who "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of" -- Serendip being a name of what's now called Sri Lanka, from Arabic Sarandib, from Sanskrit Simhaladvipa "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island." It is sometimes loosely used as a synonym for good luck, but current usage in science emphasizes the sense of finding one thing when looking for something else. Zemblanity was coined in 1998 by novelist William Boyd as its direct opposite, after the Arctic island group Novaya Zemlya, sometimes Englished as Nova Zembla. It hasn't really caught on yet, despite appearing in columns and essays about words, but I'm sure all of us here will do our part to help it along. "She told herself she was just being paranoid when came home to check on her husband, but indeed she had the zemblanity to found him in bed with the pool boy."
---L.
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Date: 2013-02-11 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 12:46 am (UTC)---L.
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Date: 2013-02-12 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-14 02:06 pm (UTC)