Novelle

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A short, fictional narrative that typically explores a single character or event in depth
2. A concise story that often emphasizes depth over breadth, focusing on a particular theme or moment
3. A brief literary work that presents a complete tale while maintaining an element of narrative complexity

Etymology: The English "novelle" is a borrowing of the Italian plural of "novella," and that plural form is the clue to its history. In Italian, "novella" (from Latin "novellus," meaning "new" or "young") was a short tale, and the plural "novelle" was used for collections of such tales, the way "Decameron" stories were gathered together. English took the word over in that plural shape, so the form that looks like a grammatical oddity is really the trace of a whole collection being borrowed as a single name. Because the word arrived as a plural, English speakers sometimes treat it as though it were singular, and the meaning settled around the idea of a compact narrative that rewards close reading rather than sprawling coverage. The Italian source shows that the short-tale sense was the original one, so the modern emphasis on depth over breadth is a continuation of that older idea rather than a new invention.