Word.ws English Dictionary

novity

UK/ˈnɒvɪtɪ//ˈnɑvɪti/

novity noun: an innovation; a novelty.

novity: Sprouting onion with green shoots emerging
Photo by Gennady Zakharin on Unsplash

Noun

novity (countable and uncountable, plural novities)

  1. (archaic, countable) An innovation; a novelty.
    • 1460, “Dublin documents” quoted by John Thomas Gilbert in Calendar of the Ancient Records of Dublin (1889), volume 1, page 307
    • The ‘Jesus freaks’ and other extravagant novities of American religious life.1972 December 22nd, The Times Literary Supplement, column 5, page 1,545
  2. (archaic, uncountable) Novelty; newness.
    • With a nouitee or straungnesse full of trifles.1569, James Sanford [translator], Of the Vanitie and Vncertaintie of Artes and Sciences, 1st edition, translation of original by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, page 14b
    • That unmeaning assumption of eternal novity.1823 December, Charles Lamb, “Amicus Redivivus”, in The London Magazine, column 1, page 615

Forms of novity

pluralnovities
alternative formnovitee
alternative formnouite
alternative formnouitee
alternative formnovite
alternative formnouitie
alternative formnovitie
alternative formnouity

Origin of novity

Inherited from the Middle English novitē (“an innovative practice”), borrowed from Middle French novité (“novelty, change, innovation”), from the Latin novitās (“newness, novelty; rareness, strangeness; newness of rank; reformation”); cognate with the Italian novità, the Portuguese novidade, the Romanian noutate, and the Spanish novedad.

Questions about novity

What does novity mean?
Novity means an innovation; a novelty.
What part of speech is novity?
Novity is a noun.
How do you pronounce novity?
Novity is pronounced /ˈnɒvɪtɪ/ (UK).
What is the plural of novity?
The plural of novity is novities.

Words near novity in the dictionary

  1. novitiations
  2. novities
  3. novitious
  4. Novitsky
  5. Novitskys
  6. novity
  7. Novo
  8. Novo Mesto
  9. Novo Virje
  10. Novo-Poltavka
  11. Novo-Russia

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: novity (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-novity.ogg.

Cite this entry: “novity.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/novity. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.