Kismet Meaning: When Life Feels Written in Advance

Kismet meaning, two moods of one word

To define kismet: it is the force or plan that decides what will happen in a person's life. People use it in two moods:

1. Fate in general, often accepted calmly: "Whatever happens is kismet."
2. A good thing that seems meant to be, especially a meeting, a job or a find: "Finding this flat the day our lease ended felt like kismet."

The second, happier use is the one you hear most today in English. Kismet is uncountable, so you say it was kismet, not a kismet.

A word that travelled through three languages

Kismet came into English in the mid 1800s from Turkish kismet. Turkish took it from Persian qismat, which came from Arabic qisma, meaning a division, a share or a lot. Its Arabic root, q s m, carries the sense of dividing and allotting. So the root picture is of a portion handed out: your kismet is your share of what life brings.

In Muslim tradition, belief that God decrees what happens is a matter of faith, and the everyday idea of one's allotted portion grew up alongside it. In English the word has lost most of that religious weight and is usually light hearted. Our pages on inshallah and mashallah explain other Arabic phrases about God's will that English speakers hear often.

Kismet in sentences

• Two strangers grabbed for the final copy of an old cookbook at the market. Kismet, one of them said, and they became friends.
• He missed his train, caught the next one and sat beside the recruiter who later hired him. Pure kismet.
• My grandmother never worried about the future; to her, the rest was kismet.
• The band's two singers grew up on the same street but only met years later in another city, which their fans call kismet.
• Don't leave your exam results to kismet. Study.

Kismet, fate, luck and serendipity compared

The key difference: serendipity is a happy accident, while kismet suggests the accident was not really an accident at all.

How to say and use kismet

Say KIZ-met or KIS-met; both are standard, with stress on the first syllable. It works best in casual speech and personal writing: wedding speeches, travel stories, captions under a photo of two old friends. In a work report it may sound out of place.

Natural pairings include it was kismet, pure kismet, call it kismet and a kismet moment. Kismet is also used as a name for shops and pets, but as a common noun it is written in lower case.

Is kismet only about love?

No. Romance is the most popular setting because people enjoy the thought that a partner was meant for them, but kismet also fits careers, homes, pets and friendships. Writers sometimes use it with gentle irony about bad luck too: "Of course it rained on the one day I washed the car. Kismet." That darker use is closer to plain fate. English has picked up many such travelling words; a selection sits in our foreign phrases collection.