My Favorite Word Sample Essay (Essay Sample)

My Favorite Word - Serendipity
Name
Institution
My Favorite Word - Serendipity
This word, serendipity, not only sounds pretty but also feels ‘sweet’ in the mouth when pronounced. I first bumped onto this word back in campus when our physics instructor was giving brief histories of scientific discoveries. Besides, I believe everyone is always happy to discover a fortune, which changes his or her life for the better, when not in the business of searching for it. A brief meaning and historical coining of serendipity provides a concise and worthwhile attribute to it and why it has become my favorite word.
Serendipity is a noun that refers to the utter luck of accidentally discovering fortunate events or encounters that come as a by-product in the process of looking for other things. The word means a fortunate happenstance of making discoveries of things that one was not looking for in the first place. Horace Walpole, coined this word in 1754, in a letter he wrote to one of his friends in which he used the word to try to explain an event he had discovered while referring to ‘The three Princes of Serendip’, a famous Persian fairy tale. According to Walpole, the princes were always bumping onto new discoveries of things they were not pursuing (Merton & Barber, 2004). For instance, he refers to a fairy tale in ‘The three Princes of Serendip’ in which he noted that one of the princes discovered a mule, blind in one eye, had travelled using the same road lately. The princes made this discovery while traveling the same route because he observed the grass appeared to have been eaten on the left side only, more than the right.
Most of the historic scientific discoveries we enjoy today also resulted from sheer serendipity. However, despite ‘Serendipity’ playing an important role in scientific discoveries, researchers often ignore the word in literature. Instead, many scientists base their discoveries on logic and predictability rather than luck owing to the traditional scientific thinking and behavior. For example, scientific innovations, such as the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming and the discovery of gravitational pull by Isaac Newton are occurrences attributed mostly to serendipity, accidental discoveries. Isaac Newton, while sitting under an apple tree, noticed a fruit falling to the ground and wondered why it did not fall upwards. It is from this event that he discovered the law of gravity. Many other inventions, such as the microwave oven by Percy Spencer (1945), discovery of quinine, small pox vaccination, and x-rays, all owe their discoveries from utter sagacity or accidents (Archibug & Filippetti, 2015).
However, I love this word most because of the way it ‘pronounces’ itself in my mouth, ‘serendipity’. It sounds closer to ‘stupidity’, and I believe...