Zemblanity is the word, is the word that your heard, it's got groove it's got meaning

I received an email from Christopher Williams about a word for an unplanned unfortunate discovery [1], and he stated that the word I was looking for was “zemblanity.” I have never heard this word before, so I decided to try looking it up in the The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary [2]. I did not find it, but then again, the copy I have is from 1971. It may be a new word. I did, however, find the word “Zemblan,” which describes things relating to Nova Zembla, an island in the Artic Ocean north of Russia.

I decided to check the online Oxford dictionary and did not find the word there [3]. I then did some Internet searching and found that it was made up by William Boyd [4] for his book _Armadillo_ [5]. The reason for defining the word “zemblanity” as the opposite of “serendipity” is worth reading in the linked article. Not only is it fitting, I found it amusing.

[1] /boston/2026/03/24.1

[2] https://www.conman.org/people/spc/about/2025/0611.html

[3] https://www.oed.com/search/advanced/Entries?q=zemblanity&sortOption=Frequency

[4] https://atkinsbookshelf.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/theres-a-word-for-that-zemblanity/

[5] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0043EWV9W/conmanlaborat-20

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