Jeff from Iron Mountain, Michigan, is curious about the word happenstance. It’s a combination of the words happen and circumstance, and means by chance or by accident. Happenstance has been around since the 1850s. It outlasted a couple of competing terms, happenchance and happenso, the latter a reduction of it so happens. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “What About Happenstance?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello.
Hi, who’s this?
This is Jeff Super.
Jeff, where are you calling us from?
Iron Mountain, Michigan.
Iron Mountain, Michigan.
All right.
Well, welcome to the show.
What can we do for you?
I was listening to your show for the first time, and I was driving in my car.
And so when you were talking about way with words, I came up with a word that I don’t have the meaning for.
It was called happenstance.
Okay.
How would you use it in a sentence?
I’ve used it in words or sentences before and say just for the happenstance, meaning, in other words, the occurrence, I thought.
But I’m not sure.
So I thought I’d come to you folks.
Yeah.
So it basically means by chance or by accident or just by the way or by coincidence, something like that.
It’s a combination of the two words happen and circumstance.
OK.
And so you can kind of get from those two words something that happened by circumstance and you get happenstance.
It comes from about the 1850s, and it’s a kind of elevated word, wouldn’t you say, Jeff?
It’s not the kind of thing that you would write in a letter maybe to a friend, but maybe more writes in something formal.
Truly, yeah, because it is a formal word.
Like you said, from 1850, I would probably guess it’s got a lot of history behind it.
Yeah, it actually had some competitors in the beginning, including happenchance, which didn’t catch on as well,
And happen so, kind of a reduction of it so happens.
But happenstance happened to be the word that won out.
Interesting.
Yeah, right?
We have a lot of quoteisms in the UP of Michigan.
And we have a Finnish community.
When I came to town in Marquette back in 1967,
And it was a greeting when you walked on the street and you passed somebody
And you wouldn’t be recognized, they’d say,
How come you know Halomi when you know me so easy?
That’s melodious.
It’s like a little poem.
That’s wonderful.
One of those things.
Jeff, welcome to the show.
We’re glad you caught us for the first time.
Thanks for listening, and we appreciate your call.
I will continue to listen to you folks.
You’re very enjoyable and very entertaining.
Aw, thank you.
Okay, great.
Take care now.
Bye now.
Bye, Jeff.
If you happen to have a language question, perchance, give us a call, 877-929-9673,
Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
