Serendipity

I hope all like-minded word junkies out there noted today's Doonesbury comic, which featured a vocabulary-focused punchline! B.D.'s veteran buddy Leo (a.k.a. Toggle), who is coping with a traumatic brain injury that affects his speech, is commenting on the fortunate coincidence of befriending online someone B.D. knows. "It's serendipity," he manages to stammer after several halting tries -- only to be told by B.D. and his mom that what he has uttered is not a real word and to try again.

I appreciate the humor of the other characters assuming that Toggle has failed in getting out a complete or right word due to his aphasia when it's their ignorance that has been exposed. I also appreciate the unexpected use of a polysyllabic word in the context of a comic strip. Yes, yes, Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau is an Ivy League liberal arts graduate, so of course he must have an extensive vocabulary that he can put in the mouths of his characters and all that. But here he's challenging us to think about our assumptions of vocabulary.

It's kind of funny that Toggle chooses a word like serendipity, but why? Because he's depicted as a young man from what appears to be a blue-collar background who hasn't attended college? By the same token, why is it frequently the case that someone who utters words like serendipity offhand is seen as sort of eggheaded or snooty? Who made an unwritten rule that polysyllabic or somewhat obscure words should be the sole province of only one segment of society, that only brandy-snifting, Shakespeare-quoting, sheepskin-holding people (for the record, I'm a wine sipper rather than brandy snifter) can use serendipity while others must confine themselves to a neat coincidence or a lucky chance discovery? Why should anyone be denied the fun of rolling their tongue around a particularly well-formed cluster of syllables, or just enjoying a rich variety of synonyms to describe their insights and ideas instead being confined to the same few words over and over?

Let's here it for Toggle and Trudeau!

Dictionary Definition
Prounounced: |ser-ən-dip-i-tē|
Root: Serendip, a former name for Sri Lanka; the term serendipity was coined by Horace Walpole who said he was inspired by the title of a fairytale, "The Three Princes of Serendip," which featured characters who frequently made beneficial discoveries by chance.
1. The occurrence or development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way; good fortune, providence, happy coincidence
2. The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.