novel

Pluralnovels

1. 1
   booknouncountable

   An extended work of prose fiction, longer than a novella.

   The novel follows three generations of a family across a century.

   Critics praised her debut novel for its intricate structure.

   UsageUsually fiction: a biography or a history is a book, not a novel.

   Note

   The book-length sense came through Italian novella rather than French, and it was once new enough to alarm moralists. Vicesimus Knox's Essays Moral and Literary suggested that, if the age was more corrupt than the one before, "the great multiplication of Novels" had probably played a part, adding that fifty years before there had scarcely been one in the kingdom, though romances abounded. Novella, its doublet, now names the shorter form.

2. 2
   never seen beforeadjective

   New and unlike anything known or done before, often in an interesting or original way.

   Researchers identified a novel strain that had never been recorded before.

   The factory adopted a novel process for recycling plastic waste.

   UsageMostly before a noun, in phrases like a novel approach, a novel idea or a novel virus.

   Note

   It can mean simply without precedent, as in a novel virus, or add that the newness is striking, as in a novel idea. It mostly comes before a noun (a novel approach, a novel process). It goes back through Old French novel ("new, fresh") to Latin novellus, a diminutive of novus ("new"); the book came separately, through Italian novella.

3. 3
   nounobsolete

   Something new or recently introduced; a novelty.

   Libum is a cake made of Honey (sugar is a nouvelle, since the discovery of America), meale and oyle.

   1687, John Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme

   Note

   A noun for a new thing, long out of use. John Aubrey's Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, written in the 1680s, spells it nouvelle, close to the Old French novelle behind it. He remarks that sugar has been a nouvelle only since the discovery of America.

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