Squint
I said that sometimes you have to “squint your ears”
Never Do Without You: Adding the seasoning – Anil Dash
I love that: Squint your ears.
Serendipity
I asked a friend in Portugal to suggest a name for the first piece I recorded in Lisbon. She suggested “Serendipity”.
I knew the meaning of “Serendipity” but not the etymology. So I looked it up.
I discovered that the word was coined by Horace Walpole, in 1754, from the Persian fairytale “The Three Princes of Serendip”. The tale tells the story of three heroes who possess an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by chance. They were magnets for lucky accidents. I also learned that the word “Serendip” is the Classical Persian name for… Sri Lanka.
The Persian tale, about princes from Sri Lanka, was published in Italian in Venice in 1557, adapted from Amir Khusrau’s Hasht-Bihisht from 1302. It was translated into English and the new word was coined. That’s an interesting journey and reminds me of the word Sapo (toad). Here is my 2001 post about Sapo. (What I didn’t know then was that the game originated in South America and traveled from there to Spain, from where the word journeyed to North America.)
have to remember that – Squint your ears – tks
Always found brilliance in children books. Good children writers can teach valuable lessons with simple language.