bildungsroman
/ˈbɪl.dʊŋzˌɹoʊ.mən/
bildungsroman noun: a novel tracing the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character, usually from childhood to maturity.
Noun (1)
bildungsroman (plural bildungsromans or bildungsromane)
- A novel tracing the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character, usually from childhood to maturity.
- English speakers are more hospitable to fiction in translation, and yet when was the last time you heard someone mention “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship” or “Elective Affinities,” Goethe’s long fictions? These books have a good claim to have founded two of the major genres of the modern...2016 January 25, Adam Kirsch, “What’s great about Goethe?”, in The New Yorker
- Goethe's honorific assignment to the vanguard of a uniquely German novelistic tradition of the bildungsroman simultaneously places him outside the mainstream of the development of the novel.2020, Frederick Amrine, Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman: Rethinking the Wilhelm Meister Novels, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 2
Noun (2) capitalized: Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman (plural Bildungsromans or Bildungsromane)
- Alternative letter-case form of bildungsroman.
bildungsroman meaning in Marathi and Vietnamese
bildungsroman in Marathi
- a type of novel
- बिल्डुंग्जरोमान bilḍuṅgjaromān
bildungsroman in Vietnamese
- a type of novel
- bildungsroman
Forms of bildungsroman
| plural | bildungsromans |
|---|---|
| plural | bildungsromane |
| alternative form | Bildungsroman |
| plural | Bildungsromans |
| plural | Bildungsromane |
Origin of bildungsroman
Borrowed from German Bildungsroman, from Bildung (“education, formation”) + -s- + Roman (“novel”).
Questions about bildungsroman
- What does bildungsroman mean?
- Bildungsroman means a novel tracing the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character, usually from childhood to maturity.
- What is bildungsroman in Marathi?
- Bildungsroman in Marathi is बिल्डुंग्जरोमान (bilḍuṅgjaromān). See Bildungsroman meaning in Marathi.
- What part of speech is bildungsroman?
- Bildungsroman is a noun.
- How do you pronounce bildungsroman?
- Bildungsroman is pronounced /ˈbɪl.dʊŋzˌɹoʊ.mən/.
- What is the plural of bildungsroman?
- The plural of bildungsroman is bildungsromans.
Words near bildungsroman in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bildungsroman (page history and authors); Bildungsroman (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “bildungsroman.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bildungsroman. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.