serendipity

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ser·en·dip·i·ty

(ser'en-dip'i-tē),

A knack for discovery involving a combination of accident and wisdom while pursuing something else; in science, finding one thing while looking for something else, as in Fleming's discovery of penicillin.

[coined by Horace Walpole and relates to The Three Princes of Serendip, fr. alternate spelling of Serendib, ancient name for Sri Lanka]

Farlex Partner Medical Dictionary © Farlex 2012

ser·en·dip·i·ty

(ser'en-dip'i-tē)

A knack for discovery involving a combination of accident and wisdom while pursuing something else; in science, finding one thing while looking for something else.

Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions and Nursing © Farlex 2012

ser·en·dip·i·ty

(ser'en-dip'i-tē)

A knack for discovery involving combined accident and wisdom while pursuing something else.

Medical Dictionary for the Dental Professions © Farlex 2012

Mentioned in ?

Ulysses syndrome

References in periodicals archive ?

No one was more acutely aware of the role and nuances of serendipity in social theory and practice than Robert K.

Merton, Robert K., and Elinor Barber. The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: a Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science

The only thing that the Ninth Circuit overlooked was the Serendipity Singers' song which did, after all, climb to No.

Keeping dry: a mold claim leads the Ninth Circuit to examine the causation and loss-in-progress rule

For example, a word I often use in some of my speeches is the word "serendipity." I choose to define that word because I have found that although many people have heard the word, they don't know what it means.

Let the audience understand!

Others address the dispositif--the apparatus that underwrites the "inevitability" of the outcome--with a rigor verging on the absurd: Blinky Palermo and Ellsworth Kelly (in his Paris years) both foreground an element of serendipity, even randomness, inherent in the artwork's genesis (a simple window casement or the shadow of a grid cues a composition).

Work in process: Bernard Frize

It was produced by a fateful combination of business skill and serendipity, says Frank Batten, who, with Jeffrey L.

Weather vain

The closely related phenomena of happenstance (Miller, 1983; Mitchell, Levin, & Krumboltz, 1999), serendipity (Betsworth & Hansen, 1996; Krumboltz, 1998; Watts, 1996; Williams et al., 1 998), and chance events (Bandura, 1982; Cabral & Salomone, 1990; Scott & Hatalla, 1990) in career patterns have been well documented and discussed.

Coincidence, happenstance, serendipity, fate, or the hand of god: Case studies in synchronicity. (Article)

Dartington Foods has launched its Serendipity range of Fruit in Liqueurs, which includes five different types of fruit in syrup combined with genuine liquors and spirits.

Harrison Smith French Flint jars contain Fruit in Liqueurs. (Packaging Equipment)

The pair have won rave reviews in America for playing star-crossed lovers in the new romantic movie Serendipity and both admit fate has played a big hand in their own individual love lives.

Kate trusts the fates. . .; Screen Scene

Too bad--her feebly imagined Serendipity role needs all the humanity it can get.