The word was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754, from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip. (Serendip is an old Persian name for Sri Lanka.) The episode in the story involves a case of spectacular abductive reasoning (as used by Sherlock Holmes), which later leads to unsought "serendipitous" rewards from the king.

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Serendipity is used as a sociological method in Anselm L. Strauss' and Barney G. Glasers Grounded Theory, building on ideas by sociologist Robert K. Merton, who in Social Theory and Social Structure (1949) claimed that serendipity was an Indian concept.

This word has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company. However, due to its sociological use, the word has been imported into many other languages (Portuguese serendipicidade or serendipidade; French sérendipicité or sérendipité; Spanish serendipia; Italian serendipità; Dutch serendipiteit).