Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The quality of being novel; newness.
  • noun Something new and unusual; an innovation.
  • noun A small mass-produced article, such as a toy or trinket.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • The quality of being novel; newness; freshness; recentness of origin or introduction.
  • Unaccustomedness; strangeness; novel or unusual character or appearance: as, the novelty of one's surroundings.
  • Something new or strange; a novel thing: as, to hunt after novelties.
  • Especially A new article of trade; an article of novel design or new use.
  • An innovation.
  • In patent law, the quality of being sub-stantially different from any previous invention.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality or state of being novel; newness; freshness; recentness of origin or introduction.
  • noun Something novel; a new or strange thing.
  • noun A small mass-produced article of little value; a knickknack.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state of being new or novel; newness.
  • noun A new product; an innovation.
  • noun A small mass-produced trinket.
  • noun In novelty theory, newness, density of complexification, and dynamic change as opposed to static habituation.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun originality by virtue of being refreshingly novel
  • noun cheap showy jewelry or ornament on clothing
  • noun a small inexpensive mass-produced article
  • noun originality by virtue of being new and surprising

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old French novelté (Modern French nouveauté), from the adjective novel, ultimately from Latin novellus.

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Examples

  • From my testimony then about myself, if you believe it, judge of others also who are Catholics: we do not find the difficulties which you do in the doctrines which we hold; we have no intellectual difficulty in that doctrine in particular, which you call a novelty of this day.

    Apologia Pro Vita Sua John Henry Newman 1845

  • From my testimony then about myself, if you believe it, judge of others also who are Catholics: we do not find the difficulties which you do in the doctrines which we hold; we have no intellectual difficulty in that in particular, which you call a novelty of this day.

    Apologia pro Vita Sua John Henry Newman 1845

  • The business of the world is imitation, and that which we call novelty is nothing but repetition.

    Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions. Vol. V. 1634-1716 1823

  • Adrian Ludwig of the Adobe AIR team recaps the various territories it has been adopted into: social apps (mostly Twitter apps, I think), enterprise apps (Salesforce, Oracle), government apps (the Polish Finance Ministry), and what I call novelty apps (like the Fast & Furious widget and the HP Green).

    Flex RIA United 2009

  • Instead they waited until Williams said the sort of moderately dumb thing about something that had gotten a whole lot of other people fired without much forethought or responsibility (the only novelty is that for the first time, someone was saying something moderately dumb about Muslims and NOT getting away with it).

    TV SoundOff: Sunday Talking Heads The Huffington Post News Team 2010

  • When apparel maker Betabrand created a pair of khaki pants whose back-pocket linings and hems could be exposed to reveal reflective fabric, it expected the pants to be a short-term novelty item.

    Beyond Spandex: Chic Styles for Cyclists Take Off Christina Binkley 2011

  • And to this day, you can still find Thundercats gear in novelty shops.

    Friday Top 5: 80s Cartoons 2009

  • Convenience might be the reason most people give for going out to grab lunch, but novelty is a huge part of it.

    Make Your Packed Lunch More Appealing | Lifehacker Australia 2009

  • When it comes to monster movies, novelty is not the be-all end-all; there is always room for a splashy new death or a witty recontextualization, but there are benefits to sticking to the formula.

    Farihah Zaman: 2010 Fantastic Fest #3: All Creatures Great and Small; Zombies, Vampires, and Terrible Human Beings Farihah Zaman 2010

  • One seems like a license to print money, and the other may end up being simply an exercise in novelty printing.

    Paint it black: DC Comics solicitations for July 2009 | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources – Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment 2009

Comments

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  • See my rant about how I hate the term "Ice cream novelties".

    January 6, 2008

  • I've never heard the term ice cream novelties. What does it refer to? Read the rant and still not clear to me.

    January 6, 2008

  • The google search should be self explanatory

    . Basically it is a blanket term for ice cream bars, frozen candy bars, ice cream sandwiches, and all other variety of typically frozen prepackaged desserts.

    January 6, 2008