novella

Etymology

It is borrowed from Italian novella (“short story”),^[2][3][4][5] the feminine of novello (“new”),^[5][6] from Latin novellus (“new, young, recent”), a diminutive of novus (“new”).^[5][3] Onions explains the noun as short for storia novella (“new story”),^[7][8] and the Italian noun was used for a tale or narrative from the 13th century.^[6] The same Italian word had already been borrowed in the 16th century as novel, which later came to mean a long prose fiction;^[8][3] novella itself was taken over again for a short novel.^[8][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A short fictitious narrative: 1677, in the postscript to Aphra Behn's The Rover.^[2] The 1989 edition of the OED had dated it to 1902,^[9] Etymonline to 1901,^[3] and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate to 1898.^[10]

Semantic evolution

In English the word first named a short story of the kind told in Italian collections, such as those of Boccaccio's Decameron, often with a moral or satirical point.^[11][9][12] In the early 20th century it was borrowed again for a short novel or long short story, a work between the short story and the novel in length;^[8][13][2] Etymonline quotes W. D. Howells, writing in 1901, on how hard it is to tell where a novella ends and a novel begins.^[3] The two senses keep different plurals: novelle for the Italian tales and usually novellas for short novels.^[5]

Timeline

• 1677 – a short fictitious narrative, in Aphra Behn.^[2]
• 1901 – a short novel or long short story.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A short novel; a work of fiction between a short story and a novel in length and complexity: Her first book was a novella of about forty thousand words.^[5][11][2]
2. (plural usually novelle) A short prose tale with a compact, pointed plot, often with a moral or satirical point, like those of Boccaccio.^[5][11][12]

Related words

• novel
• novelette
• novelty
• new
• nova
• novice

Usage notes

Katherine Anne Porter objected to novella as a slack, affected word, and asked readers to call her works short novels instead.^[14]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Onions, C. T., ed. (1966), The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ a b Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
13. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Hendrickson, Robert (2008), The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 4th ed., New York: Facts on File