innovation
Pluralinnovations (some meanings)
- 1The act of introducing something new, especially into customs, practices, or established ways of doing things.
Constant innovation kept the firm ahead of its competitors.
Innovation in farming methods raised yields across the region.
Similarinvention, creativity, modernization, originality, change
Oppositestagnation, tradition, conservatism
Note
The core sense, and the one the others build on. The word came into English from Middle French, by way of Old French innovacion and Late Latin innovatio, and it pairs with its verb as innovate plus -ion. It is often an abstract mass noun with a field named before it, as in medical innovation. Peter Drucker's The Landmarks of Tomorrow (1954) treats it as a whole outlook: order created by taking risks.
- 2Something newly introduced that runs against established customs, manners, or rites.
Like slipping a foreign word into a centuries-old prayer: strangers may admire it, but the faithful bristle.
Many elders distrusted the innovation, preferring the rites of their ancestors.
Each innovation in church practice met fierce resistance from the congregation.
Similarnovelty, departure, change, deviation
Oppositetradition, custom, convention
Note
An older, warier shade of the word, in which newness is measured against custom and found at odds with it. Where a change in customs is neutral, this sense carries suspicion. The new thing is a departure from settled manners or rites, and historically the word could serve as a reproach. Read it this way in older writing about ritual and worship, where an innovation was seldom meant as praise.
- 3A change in established customs or practice brought about by introducing something new.
The reform brought a sweeping innovation to how courts handled minor cases.
Decades passed before the innovation in voting procedures became routine.
Similarchange, reform, departure, advance, modernization
Note
Here the word names the result rather than the process, so it readily takes an article and a plural: an innovation, several innovations. Walter Scott stretches it in Waverley (1814), where guests warmed by wine "began to shew symptoms of innovation" and the frost of etiquette gave way. That is a change in manners at a single gathering. Unlike the act of introducing, this sense points at the change itself.
- 4A newly formed shoot, or the growth added each year to the stems of many mosses.
Like the fresh tip a plant pushes out at the start of each growing season.
The botanist measured the innovation produced by the moss over a single season.
Under the microscope, each innovation appeared as a pale segment above last year's growth.
Similarshoot
Note
A botanist's word, and a surprisingly literal one: the plant's fresh growth is its innovation. In mosses it names the segment added to the stem each year at the tip. A stem can therefore be read as a series of innovations, one for each season. Outside botanical writing this sense is easily misread, so it needs clear context, such as the moss or the stem it belongs to.
Practice
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Origin
This word was borrowed from Middle French "innovation", which came from Old French "innovacion" and Late Latin "innovatio", from Latin "innovo" (to renew or make new). It can also be seen as "innovate" plus the ending "-ion".