I received an email from Christopher Williams about a word for an unplanned unfortunate discovery,
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.
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.
I then did some Internet searching and found that it was made up by William Boyd for his book
Armadillo.
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.
You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go
ahead, I won't bite. I promise.
The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or
entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent
links to that entry only. The format for the links are
simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are
interested in, say 2000/08/01,
so that would make the final URL:
https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01
You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day
portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.
You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's
intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the
page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in
using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If
you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that
important.
It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name,
symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a
protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its
owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.
![[Self-portrait with a Christmas Tree] Oh Chrismtas Tree! My Christmas Tree! Rise up and hear the bells!](https://www.conman.org/people/spc/about/2025/1203.t.jpg "Oh Chrismtas Tree! My Christmas Tree! Rise up and hear the bells!")