Hello and welcome to the English Language Clinic. Last week I was asked, ?What is the difference between ?serenity? and ?serendipity??? I?ll start this week with ?serendipity? and next week look at ?serenity?. In 1754, Horace Walpole (an eighteenth century writer and politician) sent a letter to a friend, describing a fairy tale that he had read. The title of the fairy tale was The Three Princes of Serendip (?Serendip? being the Old Persian name for what is now known as Sri Lanka). In his letter, Walpole explained the meaning of a word that he had created (coined), based on the plot of the fairy tale, in which discoveries were made by accident and through cleverness (Walpole uses the word ?sagacity?, which means the ability to link together things which do not seem to have any connection).

?Serendipity? is similar in many ways to ?luck?, ?chance? and ?coincidence?; however, the important difference between these synonyms is that it takes no skill or talent to be ?lucky? or to experience ?chance? or ?coincidence?. ?Serendipity? relies on the ability to link together apparently trivial and unimportant pieces of information. Famous examples of ?serendipity? include Archimedes? famous ?Eureka? moment (having got into his bath and seen the level of the water rise he ?serendipitously? discovered the relationship between displacement and volume).

Another good example of ?serendipity? is that of Sir Isaac Newton, sitting under an apple tree and being hit on the head by a falling specimen of that tree?s pomaceous fruit; following which he allegedly came to a ?serendipitous? understanding of gravity. The important point with both these stories is that anyone can get into a bath and watch the water spill over the side or be hit on the head by a falling apple. Without the ability to link the details of these events to other facts, the results are simply a wet floor or a sore head; with such ability, they become examples of ?serendipity?.

For me, two expressions really encapsulate the idea of ?serendipity?; ?You make your own luck? and ?Always keep an open mind?.

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