All 20 Uses
novel
in
The American Language, by Mencken
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- A novelty loses nothing by the fact that it is a novelty; it rather gains something, and particularly if it meet the national fancy for the terse, the vivid, and, above all, the bold and imaginative.†
novelty = the quality of being new and original
- A novelty loses nothing by the fact that it is a novelty; it rather gains something, and particularly if it meet the national fancy for the terse, the vivid, and, above all, the bold and imaginative.†
- That is to say, we incline toward a directness of statement which, at its greatest, lacks restraint and urbanity altogether, and toward a hospitality which often admits novelties for the mere sake of their novelty, and is quite uncritical of the difference between a genuine improvement in succinctness and clarity, and mere extravagant raciness.†
- [53] American thus shows its character in a constant experimentation, a wide hospitality to novelty, a steady reaching out for new and vivid forms†
- The /Jimson weed/ itself was anything but a [Pg046] novelty, but the pioneers apparently did not recognize it, and so we find them ascribing all sorts of absurd medicinal powers to it, and even Beverley solemnly reporting that "some Soldiers, eating it in a Salad, turn'd natural Fools upon it for several Days."†
- /Shingle/ was a novelty in 1705, but one S. Symonds wrote to John Winthrop, of Ipswich, about a /clapboarded/ house in 1637.†
- "A /scooner/ let her be!" replied Captain Andrew Robinson, her [Pg048] builder—and all boats of her peculiar and novel fore-and-aft rig took the name thereafter.
*novel = new and original
- Particularly in a country where scholarship is still new and wholly cloistered, and the overwhelming majority of the people are engaged upon novel and highly exhilarating tasks, far away from schools and with a gigantic cockiness in their hearts.
- For the student interested in the biology of language, as opposed to its paleontology, there is endless material in the racy neologisms of American, and particularly in its new compounds and novel verbs.
- Two days after the first regulations of the Food Administration were announced, /to hooverize/ appeared spontaneously in scores of newspapers, and a week later it was employed without any visible sense of its novelty in the debates of Congress and had taken on a respectability equal to that of /to bryanize/, /to fletcherize/ and /to oslerize/.†
novelty = the quality of being new and original
- Mr. Cahan is not only editor of the chief Yiddish newspaper of the United States, but also an extraordinarily competent writer of English, as his novel, The Rise of David Levinsky, demonstrates.†
novel = new and original
- It is competent for any individual to offer his contribution—his new word, his better idiom, his novel figure of speech, his short cut in grammar or syntax—and it is by the general vote of the whole body, not by the verdict of a small school, that the fate of the innovation is decided.†
- Behind it is the gigantic impulse that I have described in earlier chapters: the impulse of an egoistic and iconoclastic people, facing a new order of life in highly self-conscious freedom, to break a relatively stable language, long since emerged from its period of growth, to their novel and multitudinous needs, and, above all, to their experimental and impatient spirit.
Uses with a meaning too common or too rare to warrant foucs:
- Low then quotes an extract from an American novel appearing [Pg014] serially in an English magazine—an extract including such Americanisms as /side-stepper/, /saltwater-taffy/, /Prince-Albert/ (coat), /boob/, /bartender/ and /kidding/, and many characteristically American extravagances of metaphor.†
- Let American confront a novel problem alongside [Pg027] English, and immediately its superior imaginativeness and resourcefulness become obvious.†
- Cooper, in his first novel, "Precaution," chose an English scene, imitated English models, and obviously hoped to placate the critics thereby.†
- Cooper, in his second novel, "The Spy," boldly chose an American setting and American characters, and though the influence of his wife, who came of a Loyalist family, caused him to avoid any direct attack upon the English, he attacked them indirectly, and with great effect, by opposing an immediate and honorable success to their derisions.†
- (newspaper) cutting coal-oil paraffin coal-scuttle coal-hod commission-merchant factor conductor (of a train) guard corn maize, or Indian corn corner (of a street) crossing corset stays counterfeiter coiner cow-catcher plough cracker biscuit cross-tie sleeper delicatessen-store Italian-warehouse department-store stores Derby (hat) bowler dime-novel shilling-shocker druggist chemist drug-store chemist's-shop drummer bagman dry-goods-store draper's-shop editorial leader, or leading-article elevator lift elevator-boy lift-man excursionist tripper express-company carrier filing-cabinet nest-of-drawers fire-department fire-brigade fish-dealer fishmonger floor-walker shop-walker fraternal-orde†
- The same failure, perhaps usually worse, is displayed every time an English novelist or dramatist essays to put an American into a novel or a play, and to make him speak American.†
*
- These [Pg285] names excite the derision of the English; an American comic character, in an English play or novel, always bears one of them.†
Definitions:
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(1)
(novel as in: a novel situation) new and original -- typically something considered good
-
(2)
(meaning too common or too rare to warrant focus) More commonly, novel is used as a noun to refer to a work of fiction that is published as a book. In the form novelty, the word can refer to an inexpensive, mass-produced item of interest such as a toy, trinket, or item given away to advertise.