novity

English

WOTD – 6 October 2011

Alternative forms

• novitee [15th century]
• nouite, nouitee, novite, nouitie, novitie [16th century]
• nouitie, novitie, nouity [17th century]
• novity [17th century to the present]

Etymology

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.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: nŏʹvĭtĭ, IPA^(key): /ˈnɒvɪtɪ/
• (General American) enPR: nŏʹvĭti, IPA^(key): /ˈnɑvɪti/

• Audio (US)

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Noun

novity (countable and uncountable, plural novities)

1. (countable, now rare) 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

     Such novitees hath not be uset afor this time.

   • 1972 December 22nd, The Times Literary Supplement, column 5, page 1,545:

     The ‘Jesus freaks’ and other extravagant novities of American religious life.

2. (uncountable, now rare) Novelty; newness.
   • 1569, James Sanford [translator], Of the Vanitie and Vncertaintie of Artes and Sciences, 1st edition, translation of original by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, page 14b:

     With a nouitee or straungnesse full of trifles.

   • 1823 December, Charles Lamb, “Amicus Redivivus”, in The London Magazine, column 1, page 615:

     That unmeaning assumption of eternal novity.

Translations

novity — see novelty

References

• “No·vity” listed on page 244 of volume VI, part II (M–N), § ii (N) of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles [1st ed., 1908]
• “ˈnovity” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd ed., 1989]
• “novity, n.” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [3rd ed., December 2003]