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WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE
OPINION: Sri Lanka has given us serendipity
by
Bernadette Kinlaw
|
June 21, 2021 at 1:53 a.m.
Many, many months ago, I wrote about words that entered the language from literature and mythology. I have found a new cache of them, as if by serendipity, and so here we are again.
SERENDIPITY
Horace Walpole, an 18th-century British writer, brought us serendipity. Serendip was the old name for Sri Lanka, a country in the Indian Ocean. Walpole said he created the word after reading a fairy tale called The Three Princes of Serendip : As their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.