novela

Forms

novela f (plural novelas)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Italian novella (“news; short tale”).^[2][3][1][4] The Italian word is from Vulgar Latin *novella, the neuter plural of Latin novellus (“new, young”) taken as a feminine singular, “new things”.^[5][1][6] The Latin adjective is a diminutive of novus (“new”), the source of nuevo.^[1][7] Nocentini notes that French and Occitan had the word for “news” on their own, but that in the sense “tale” the French and Spanish words are borrowed from Italian.^[5] In Italian it is recorded at the end of the 13th century in the Novellino, in both senses.^[8]

The adjective novel “new, inexperienced” is a separate borrowing from Catalan.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The BDELC dates novela about 1400, in the sense of a fairly short tale, its sense in Italian.^[2] In the 1370s and 1380s the Aragonese translations of Juan Fernández de Heredia use nouella for “news”.^[9] Nebrija's Latin dictionary of 1492 has novela beside conseja and ficion for Latin fabula, and a dulce fingidor de novelas.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias in 1611 gave two senses: news from somewhere, and a well-composed tale to entertain the listeners, like the novelle of Boccaccio.^[11] The Diccionario de Autoridades defined it as an invented story of things that commonly happen, quoting Lope de Vega, and also as any fiction or lie.^[12] The 1817 Academy dictionary added the legal sense of the new laws of the emperors added after the Code of Justinian,^[13] and Salvá marked “news” as obsolete in 1846.^[14] In 1884 the Academy described it as a literary work narrating a fictitious action to give aesthetic pleasure, with the etymology “Del ital. novella”.^[15]

The current dictionary has a long narrative work, the literary genre, and fiction or lies in general;^[3] Wiktionary also gives a soap opera.^[1] Bénaben notes that novela came to mean the long novel, so that a short story is a novela corta.^[6] In El Salvador it is a jocular word for a girlfriend.^[16]

Timeline

• 1379–1384 – Juan Fernández de Heredia's Aragonese Plutarch has nouella “news”.^[9]
• c. 1400 – the BDELC's date for novela.^[2]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin dictionary uses novela to gloss fabula.^[10]
• 1541 – the first record from the Americas, storytellers in Michoacán.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias compares the tales of Boccaccio.^[11]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary records the legal sense.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology “Del ital. novella”, and novelista is first recorded.^[15][2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A novel: a prose narrative of some length.^[3][1]
2. The novel as a literary genre.^[3]
3. Events in real life so unusual that they seem fictional: Lo que vivió en la guerra parece una novela.^[18]
4. A fiction or lie of any kind.^[3][18]
5. A soap opera, telenovela.^[1]
6. (law) A supplementary law of a code; in the plural, the laws added to the Code of Justinian.^[3][18]

Word family

• fotonovela
• novelar
• novelista
• novelístico
• novelesco
• novelón

Related words

• nuevo
• novel
• novedad
• Italian novella

Usage notes

In 1884 the Academy gave the legal sense separately, from Latin novella “new”.^[15] Novela is also the third-person singular present of novelar.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. nuevo
3. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. novela
4. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. novela
5. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier, p. s.v. novella
6. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. novela
7. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. novela
8. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli, p. s.v. novella
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. novela
10. ^ a b Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. novela
11. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1167
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. novela
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 602
14. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 755
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 743
16. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. novela
17. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. novela
18. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. novela