Novelty

How to spell novelty

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce novelty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does novelty mean?

1. nounThe quality of being new, original, or unfamiliar.
2. nounA small, inexpensive object valued for being amusing, unusual, or new rather than useful.

Novelty in a sentence

• The novelty of the new software wore off after a few weeks of daily use.

• The gift shop sold every kind of novelty, from rubber ducks to keyrings shaped like the bridge.

• Part of the restaurant's appeal was the novelty of cooking each dish at the table.

• She kept a plastic novelty on her desk that played a tinny tune when pressed.

Where does novelty come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin novellus, a diminutive of novus meaning 'new', so the original sense was something like 'a little new thing' or freshly arrived. It passed into Old French as novelte, carrying the idea of newness and of recent news, and English adopted it in the late 1300s as 'novelte', meaning the quality of being new or unfamiliar. Over time the sense broadened in two directions: the abstract idea of freshness or originality, and the concrete idea of a small new and amusing object that people buy for its surprise rather than its use. The same novus root sits inside everyday relatives such as 'novel', 'innovate' and 'renovate', all turning on the notion of making something new. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle vowel, written 'e' in 'novel' but easy to drop, giving the schwa in 'nov-EL-ty'.

How the word is built

• novel- (from Latin novellus: new, young)
• -ty (noun-forming suffix denoting quality or state)