History Schmistory: January 28. “Dear Horace, I just had a happy accident.”
Friday, January 28, 2022 in History, History Schmistory, Language, Learn!
1754: The first use of the word “serendipity” in the English language is noted in a letter from Horace Walpole to Horace Mann. A letter between Horaces! Walpole said he formed it 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”. Mann convinced Walpole to truncate the fledgling term from the original; “Serendipity-doo-dah.”
Serendipity by Nila Sivatheesan, April 7, 2014 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution.
