January 28, 1754: Horace Walpole coins a new word, serendipity, in a letter to Horace Mann. Walpole, author and cousin to Lord Nelson, wrote to a fellow Englishman then residing in Florence, Italy. Walpole referred to a fairy tale called The Three Princes of Serendip and their fortuitous discoveries. He went on to explain how these accidental discoveries were, in fact, a perfect example of "serendipity" thus creating the new word meaning "accidental sagacity."
English is the third most spoken tongue in the world. There are about 1.8 billion people who speak it either as a first or second language. Languages are living things; they grow and change over time. Words are added or lost and meanings are altered with time and place. Words enter the vocabulary in various ways. They are brought in from another language such as chaise lounge from the French. They are proper nouns that turn into common nouns, such as the trademarked Kleenex and the name Mrs. Malaprop from her role in a play where her constant misuse of words eventually led to the term malapropism entering the language meaning a Freudian slip, another example.
Words sometimes originate as acronyms such as LASER, RADAR, and SONAR. Backronyms are words that are given meaning after the word is chosen such as Yahoo, Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. Words enter via science, literature, politics, commerce, as well as pop culture. There are web sites that keep track of new usages of words. For example, spider, the insect, because spider – a bot that ran across the web searching for items to display in a list, such as a Google search.
Some neologisms, or new words, have a meteoric rise and then crash and burn into oblivion. Other words enter slowly and become part of the mainstream language. The life cycle of a word may follow a course of instability (new, used by few people or a subculture), diffused (spreading but not yet widespread), stable (gaining recognition and probably lasting inclusion), and finally dated (not only no longer new, but heading toward cliché). Both Lewis Carroll and Dr. Seuss enlivened their stories with abundant words not found in any dictionary – at the time they were written. It might be fun to let The Lorax read Jabberwocky.
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"Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for." - Lawrence Block
"Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer's daughter." - Julius Comroe Jr.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny …'" - Isaac Asimov
"Yesterday's neologisms, like yesterday's jargon, are often today's essential vocabulary." - Academic Instincts
Comments
Great article! Words are so important and I have been wishing for some new words. Words that they have in other languages that we do not have in our own. For example, I understand there is a word in South Africa for being connected with others in a spiritual way or mass consciouness way or something...anyway, we have no word for it, and I wish we did.
One more question..what web site might I go to for new words?
Fascinating! I love learning about the origin of words. I had no idea about serendipity - although I do love the word.
Word Spy has new words at www dot wordspy dot com
Owlnet is a great site for all sorts of words stuff and is at
www dot owlnet dot rice dot edu
then there is
www dot urbandictionary dot com
I don't know if www dot foreignword dot com would have what you are looking for in words from other languages
One of my favorite topics - words. One of my current favorite words is pandemonium, but serendipity was my favorite for a long time. Asimov quote is great. He was so clever with science and words.
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