novelist
Americannoun
-
novelists
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of novelist
Explanation
Someone who writes fictional books is a novelist. If your favorite novelist is Stephen King, it means you're a fan of the horror genre. When someone writes a novel, a book-length, made-up story, they can describe themselves as a novelist. Some novelists also write non-fiction, poetry, or short stories, and you can also simply call them a "writer" or an "author." Novelist was coined to mean "fiction writer" in the 1720s from novel, though the word existed earlier with several different meanings, including "news-carrier" and "innovator."
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.
See Examples For:
Before he died in 2023, McCarthy was widely considered the greatest living novelist.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2026
Running weekends through Nov. 1, “The Time Machine” is an exploration into the worlds of novelist H.G.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026
James Noel, a Haitian poet and novelist who has known Orelien for 20 years, said he spoke with him at the height of the controversy and found him "devastated".
From Barron's ● Sep. 30, 2026
The US novelist, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, died in 2016 at the age of 89.
From BBC ● Sep. 22, 2026
The novelist Charles Dickens felt Malthus depicted poor people as less than human; in novels such as Oliver Twist, he sought to remedy that, making poor people well-rounded main characters.
From "Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith" by Deborah Heiligman
Tens of thousands of comments on BookTok, a popular book community on TikTok, attest to the popularity of one of Russia's greatest novelists with the social media generation.
From Barron's ● Sep. 4, 2026
But at our best, we novelists probe deeper truths precisely because the facts cannot always, ever, be totally known.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
She was talking about journalists, but it can be just as true of novelists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026
Every year, thousands of would-be novelists pour their hearts onto the page.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026
National defense and global prestige, of course, were the two concerns that had moved the reverie of space travel from the purview of novelists and eccentrics to the country’s number-one priority.
From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly
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.
