Where It Comes From
Serendipity isn't an old word that's been quietly sitting in English for centuries — someone actually invented it, on purpose, in a letter. On January 28, 1754, the English writer Horace Walpole coined it while writing to a friend about a lucky discovery of his own. He borrowed the idea from an old Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes kept stumbling onto treasures they weren't even hunting for. "Serendip" was simply the old Persian name for the island we now call Sri Lanka.
It took nearly 200 years to catch on — the word barely shows up in print before the 20th century — but once it did, it filled a gap no other English word quite covered.
Say It Around the World
Spanish, French, and German all just borrowed the English word rather than inventing their own — which might be the most serendipitous part of all.
The next word names something you already know intimately — that specific earthy smell right after it rains. Meteorologists have a name for the oil that causes it, and it turns out, so does the dictionary. Keep going to find out what it's called.