The story has become known in the English-speaking world as the source of the word serendipity, coined by Horace Walpole because of his recollection of the part of the "silly fairy tale" in which the three princes by "accidents and sagacity" discern the nature of a lost camel. In a separate line of descent, the story was used by Voltaire in his 1747 "Zadig", and through this contributed to both the evolution of detective fiction and the self-understanding of scientific method.