{"id":10727,"date":"2014-12-11T17:10:10","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T16:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=10727"},"modified":"2014-12-11T17:10:10","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T16:10:10","slug":"haps-and-mishaps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=10727","title":{"rendered":"Haps and Mishaps"},"content":{"rendered":"

A mishap is “an unlucky accident”, according to the Oxford Dictionaries<\/a>, and is often accompanied by the word minor – e.g. we had a few minor mishaps in the kitchen, but at least we didn’t burn the chicken.<\/p>\n

I happened upon the word mishap today and it got me wondering whether the word hap also exists. It does, though it rarely used these days, as far as I can tell. <\/p>\n

Hap means: <\/p>\n

– luck, fortune
\n– a chance occurrence, especially an event that is considered unlucky
\n– to come about by chance
\n– to have the fortune or luck to do something. <\/p>\n

So it’s a contronym or auto-antonym<\/a> in that it can mean good luck and the opposite, bad luck.<\/p>\n

Here are some examples:<\/p>\n

– If you have the good hap to come into their houses
\n– I entertained the Company with the many Haps and Disasters
\n– What can hap to him worthy to be deemed evil?
\n– Where\u2019er I happ\u2019d to roam<\/p>\n

Source: Oxford Dictionaries<\/a><\/p>\n

Hap, mishap, and happen and happy, all come from the Old Norse word happ<\/em> (chance, good luck), from the Proto-Germanic *hap-\/*hamp\u0105<\/em> (convenience, happiness), from the Proto-Indo-European *kob-<\/em> (to suit, fit, succeed), which is also the root of the Old Irish cob<\/em> (victory) and the Russian \u043a\u043e\u0431\u044c<\/em> [kob’] (fate).<\/p>\n

Source: Online Etymology Dictionary<\/a> and Wiktionary<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A mishap is “an unlucky accident”, according to the Oxford Dictionaries, and is often accompanied by the word minor – e.g. we had a few minor mishaps in the kitchen, but at least we didn’t burn the chicken. I happened upon the word mishap today and it got me wondering whether the word hap also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,10,36,45,52,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-old-norse","category-proto-indo-european","category-russian","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}