serendipity: [18] Serendipity – the ‘faculty of making lucky discoveries’ – was coined in 1754 by the British writer Horace Walpole (1717–97). He took it from The Three Princes of Serendip, the title of a fairy tale whose leading characters, in Walpole’s words, ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’. (Serendip is an old name for Sri Lanka.) [serendipity etymology, serendipity origin, 英语词源]