| 释义 |
serendipity|sɛrɛnˈdɪpɪtɪ|
[f. Serendip, a former name for Sri Lanka + -ity.
A word coined by Horace Walpole, who says (Let. to Mann, 28 Jan. 1754) that he had formed it upon the title of the fairy-tale ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’, the heroes of which ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’.]
The faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident. Also, the fact or an instance of such a discovery.
Formerly rare, this word and its derivatives have had wide currency in the 20th century.
1754H. Walpole Let. to Mann 28 Jan., This discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity. 1880E. Solly Index Titles of Honour Pref. 5 The inquirer was at fault, and it was not till some weeks later, when by the aid of Serendipity, as Horace Walpole called it—that is, looking for one thing and finding another—that the explanation was accidentally found. 1926E. Meynell Life of Francis Thompson xiii. 221 To the Serendipity Shop—the venture of a friend in Westbourne Grove—he would often go. 1955Sci. Amer. Apr. 92/1 Our story has as its critical episode one of those coincidences that show how discovery often depends on chance, or rather on what has been called ‘serendipity’—the chance observation falling on a receptive eye. 1971S. E. Morison European Discovery Amer.: Northern Voy. i. 3 Columbus and Cabot..(by the greatest serendipity of history) discovered America instead of reaching the Indies. 1980TWA Ambassador Oct. 47/2 It becomes a glum bureaucracy, instead of the serendipity of 30 people putting out a magazine.
Hence serenˈdipitist.
1939Joyce Finnegans Wake 191 You..semisemitic serendipitist, you (thanks, I think that describes you) Europasianised Afferyank! 1968Punch 13 Nov. 684/1 There are the financial serendipitists, the men blessed monetarily by a fortunate law. |
