Veering under the influence

Beer can cause many things to veer. It could be quite troublesome if that thing happens to be a vehicle. However, beer also causes conversations to veer - often serendipitously. Just the other day, a conversation at a pub veered into words without antonyms. 

A few years ago, while writing a blog post about cycling, I was desperately looking for the antonym for "serendipity", but could find none. Turns out the word did not have one until very recently. While I did eventually find the antonym (not yet mainstream, but it is getting there), I only recently found out about its etymology. But before I tell you about the etymology of "zemblanity", first about "serendipity" itself.

Serendipity: The word “serendipity" did not exist in the English language before 28 January 1754! Serendib is the Urdu (a mixture of Persian and Hindi) name for Sri Lanka, where an ancient tale “The Three Princes of Serendip” is set. In a brief retelling of the story by letter (dated 28 January 1754) to a distant cousin,  Horace Walpole described the fortunate discoveries made by the heroes of the tale in Serendip as “serendipity”, as he found nothing better to express himself.

Zemblanity: Serendipity came to mainstream use over time, but for almost two and a half centuries, remained without an antonym until in 1998, when author William Boyd in his novel Armadillo coined the word “zemblanity”, as an antonym of serendipity. The etymology of the word is as follows:

> Dutch navigator, Willem Barentz was stranded on an archipelago of Russian islands called Novaya Zemlya (Russian for new land), which in English is latinised to Nova Zembla. This was rather unfortunate place to be stranded, being rather barren and icy, much unlike the lush Serendip in “The Three Princes of Serendip". Following the contrast between Serendip and the Zembla, both being places of unexpected discovery (one fortunate, the other unfortunate), William Boyd minted “zemblanity" as an antonym for serendipity.

Of course, this short essay has nothing to do with beer, and I do not think I am under the influence.

Sources: Richard Boyle; Richard Boyle; and Princeton University.