novella

[noh-vel-uh]

noun

plural

novellas, novelle 

1. a tale or short story of the type contained in the Decameron of Boccaccio.

2. a fictional prose narrative that is longer and more complex than a short story; a short novel.

novella

/ nəʊˈvɛlə /

noun

1. (formerly) a short narrative tale, esp a popular story having a moral or satirical point, such as those in Boccaccio's Decameron

2. a short novel; novelette

Word History and Origins

Origin of novella¹

From Italian, dating back to 1900–05; novel ¹

Word History and Origins

Origin of novella¹

C20: from Italian; see _novel ¹

Example Sentences

Dylan Southern directs from a script based on Max Porter’s novella.

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In his novella “The Turn of the Screw,” the connection between the supernatural and the psychological is allowed to suggestively simmer.

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Still, I missed the truly misanthropic lead of King’s novella, a sour bigot radicalized to see himself not just as a cog in a machine but as a spoke in a revolution.

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The director said he and Holloway have a shared attraction to tension that builds slowly and methodically, like in a turn-of-the-century Gothic horror novella — such as Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan.”

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Weighing in at over 70 pages, “Late” constitutes more a novella than a story, as does “The Musician of Kahani” and the equally substantial “Oklahoma.”

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Related Words

• fiction 
• narrative 
• paperback 
• prose 
• story 
• tale 
• yarn