Thursday, December 11, 2014

Word of the Day

happenstance
 \ HAP-uhn-stans \, noun;  
1.a chance happening or event.

Quotes:
“Do you really believe we are just the products of circumstance and happenstance ?” “Yes, I think so…"
-- Robert Henry Wright Jr., "Papelón: A Novel of Argentina," 2007

A pimple of a hillock here, a blue-gray mare there, a rumpled dark side. But not an anatomy: bleak evidence, rather, of heavenly happenstance .
-- John Updike, "Toward the End of Time," 1997

Origin:
Happenstance  came to English in the late 1800s and is a portmanteau of happen  and circumstance .

Dictionary.com