MEANING
1. A book-length fictional narrative that develops characters, events, and a connected story.
2. New, original, or unfamiliar in the context being discussed, rather than already known or conventional.
Use it for
referring to a long work of fiction; discussing a fictional narrative as a whole; describing a book with an extended plot; distinguishing long fiction from a short storySeparates the familiar book meaning from the adjective used to identify something new or previously unfamiliar. Writing functions: Fiction and originality.
Words that belong together
- a historical novel
- a debut novel
- a psychological novel
- write a novel
On the page
Her debut novel follows three sisters over a single winter.
The novel reveals the family’s history through letters found in an abandoned house.
The team tested a novel method for comparing handwritten records.
The experiment measured how infants responded to a novel stimulus.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- novel
Usage notes
Noun and adjective. The single-select Part of speech is Other because both roles are important. Noun: a novel; plural novels. Adjective: a novel approach; use more novel or most novel only when a comparison is meaningful; do not use noveler or novelest. Register: neutral. Commonness: common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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