The birth of ‘serendipity’ is a happy accident in itself, a perfect example of the very thing it defines. And for that, we have the 18th-century English writer and politician, Horace Walpole, to thank.

A Fateful Letter and a Clever Coinage

Picture it: London, January 28, 1754. Horace Walpole, a man of letters, art, and society, sits down to write to his friend, Horace Mann, the British envoy in Florence. Walpole was a prodigious correspondent, and his letters provide a vivid, gossipy window into the era. In this particular letter, he’s excited to describe a recent discovery he made about a coat of arms related to a Venetian noble family.

He hadn’t been actively researching this specific topic. Instead, he pieced it together from disparate, seemingly unrelated bits of information he had come across. He found himself in need of a word to describe this specific kind of discovery—finding something valuable that you weren’t actually looking for. Finding none in the English lexicon, he decided to invent one.

In his letter, he wrote:

“This discovery I made by a faculty, which I will call Serendipity, a very expressive word, which as I have nothing better to tell you of, I shall endeavour to explain to you: you will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their Highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of…”

And just like that, a word was born. Walpole plucked it from the memory of a “silly fairy tale” and gifted it to the English language. But what was this tale, and what did these princes do that was so inspiring?

The Three Princes of Serendip

The story Walpole had read was an Italian translation of a Persian tale called Hasht-Bihisht (Eight Paradises), written by the 13th-century poet Amir Khusrau. The ‘Serendip’ in the title is an old Persian name for Sri Lanka, derived from the Arabic Sarandīb.

The story follows three wise princes, the sons of King Giaffer of Serendip. To complete their education, the king sends them out into the world to learn not from books, but from direct experience. The princes, possessing keen minds and sharp observational skills, immediately begin to prove their worth.

In the most famous episode, the princes are traveling down a road when they encounter a distraught camel driver who has lost his animal. He asks if they have seen it. The princes, despite having never laid eyes on the camel, proceed to astonish the man with a series of startlingly accurate deductions.

• “Was your camel blind in the right eye?” the first prince asks. (Yes, the man confirms.) The prince explains he knew this because the grass was only eaten on the left side of the path, where it was poorer.
• “Was it missing a tooth?” asks the second. (Yes, again.) The prince noticed clumps of partly chewed grass on the ground, a sign of a gap in the camel’s teeth.
• “Was it lame in one leg?” the third inquires. (Indeed.) The princes had seen the scuffed tracks of only three feet, with one leg being dragged.
• They go on, deducing that the camel was carrying a pregnant woman, and that it was loaded with butter on one side and honey on the other (due to the flies congregating on one side of the trail and ants on the other).

The camel driver is so dumbfounded by their accuracy that he accuses them of stealing the camel and has them arrested. Before Emperor Beramo, the princes calmly explain their methods, demonstrating that their incredible knowledge came not from theft, but from sharp observation and logical inference. Soon after, the camel is found, and the princes are celebrated for their wisdom.

More Than Just Dumb Luck

This is the crucial element that Walpole captured in his new word. The princes weren’t just lucky. They made their discoveries “by accidents and sagacity.” Sagacity—the quality of having keen perception and sound judgment—is the secret ingredient.

Serendipity isn’t simply about a happy coincidence. It’s about having a prepared, observant mind that can recognize the significance of an accidental discovery. You might walk past the same clues as the princes, but without their sagacity, you would see nothing but grass, ants, and scuffed dirt. They weren’t looking for a one-eyed, lame camel carrying honey, but their minds were open enough to find one from the evidence before them.

This distinction is what makes serendipity such a powerful concept, especially in the world of science and innovation.

• Penicillin: Alexander Fleming didn’t set out to discover antibiotics. He returned from vacation to find a petri dish contaminated with mold, but with his “sagacity”, he noticed that the mold was killing the bacteria around it.

– Post-it Notes: A 3M scientist, Spencer Silver, accidentally created a weak adhesive when he was trying to make a strong one. Years later, his colleague Art Fry, frustrated that his bookmarks kept falling out of his hymnal, remembered the “useless” glue. A serendipitous connection.

– The Microwave Oven: Percy Spencer, an engineer, was working on radar technology when he noticed a candy bar in his pocket had melted. He wasn’t trying to invent a new way to cook, but his prepared mind connected the melting chocolate with the magnetron tube and led him to experiment.

The Journey of a Word

Despite its charming origin, ‘serendipity’ didn’t become an overnight sensation. For over 150 years, it remained a rather obscure literary term, used primarily by a small circle of intellectuals. It didn’t even appear in a major dictionary until the early 20th century.

But in the modern era, the word has blossomed. It perfectly captures a feeling we’ve all experienced but previously had no single word for. It’s a linguistic treasure that reminds us that sometimes, the best things in life are found when we’re not even looking for them—as long as we’re paying attention.

The story of ‘serendipity’ is a beautiful meta-narrative. It’s a word for happy accidents that was, in itself, a happy accident—a legacy of an 18th-century writer’s chance reading of a 13th-century Persian tale, written to describe a discovery he made about an even older painting. It’s a word layered with history, travel, and the quiet magic of a mind ready to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.