novel
1 Americannoun
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a fictitious prose narrative of considerable length and complexity, portraying characters and usually presenting a sequential organization of action and scenes.
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(formerly) novella.
adjective
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of a new and unusual kind; different from anything seen or known before.
a novel idea.
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not previously detected or reported.
the emergence of novel strains of the virus.
noun
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Roman Law.
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an imperial enactment subsequent and supplementary to an imperial compilation and codification of authoritative legal materials.
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Usually Novels imperial enactments subsequent to the promulgation of Justinian's Code and supplementary to it: one of the four divisions of the Corpus Juris Civilis.
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Civil Law. an amendment to a statute.
noun
adjective
noun
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an extended work in prose, either fictitious or partly so, dealing with character, action, thought, etc, esp in the form of a story
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the literary genre represented by novels
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obsolete (usually plural) a short story or novella, as one of those in the Decameron of Boccaccio
Usage
What is a novel? A novel is a long work of fiction written in prose that tells a narrative involving characters and usually involving an organized set of actions occurring in a setting.Let’s break that down. Fiction is a type of writing (literature) that involves characters that don’t exist or people (usually famous) who have been reimagined (fictionalized). The events in fiction are made up, or, in the case of historic events, were fictionalized.Prose is the ordinary manner of writing that we use, that is, using complete sentences and not poetic verses. A narrative is a telling of events or experiences. Stories and essays are narratives.A setting is a story’s location and time. Some novels take place in our own time and place, while others take place in the past, in another country, in the future, and even in space or on other planets (real or made-up).Length is usually the key difference between works of fiction. While there are no official rules, a novel is generally at least 50,000 words, and many novels are much longer than this. By contrast, a short story is often 1,000 to 10,000 words, although flash fiction can be as short as 500 words. A novella (a short novel) is somewhere in between a short story and a novel.
Related Words
See new.
Other Word Forms
- novellike adjective
Etymology
Origin of novel1
First recorded in 1560–70; from Italian novella (storia) “new (story)”; novel 2
Origin of novel2
First recorded in 1375–1425; late Middle English, from Anglo-French, Middle French novel, from Old French novel, nouvel, from Latin novellus “fresh, young, novel,” diminutive of novus “new”; new
Origin of novel3
First recorded in 1605–15; from Late Latin novella (constitūtiō) “a new (regulation, order)”; novel 2
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Amazon MGM is putting all of their chips on this film, and for good reason: Andy Weir’s 2021 source novel was a hit among critics and especially among voracious readers of contemporary science fiction.
From Salon
Another Nobel laureate, William Faulkner, set his novels in the post-Civil War South, but Depression-era readers could identify with the bankrupt economy, the impoverishment of farmers and the political disruption, Conn says.
“It’s highly technical and a scientifically novel modeling effort, but it wasn’t developed through a facilitated process or expert peer-reviewed,” Tillemans said, adding that it “requires additional time to complete a thorough review.”
From Los Angeles Times
He has used the novel tack of publicly proclaiming his lack of independence to enlarge himself.
Lawrence, in 1924 in exchange for the manuscript of his novel “Sons and Lovers.”
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
