newness

Meanings

1. 1noununcountable

   The state of having only recently been made, started or introduced.

   Grammar: No plural and usually no article: the newness of the building.

   Patterns

   • the newness of something

   The newness of the sofa wore off after the first spilled coffee.

   You could smell the newness of the freshly painted classroom.

   Because of its newness, the app still had a few bugs.

2. 2noununcountable

   The feeling or quality of being unfamiliar, fresh or not yet experienced.

   Grammar: Often describes how a situation feels: the newness of life in a new country.

   Patterns

   • the newness of something
   • a sense of newness

   She felt the newness of the city with every unfamiliar street.

   The newness of parenthood left them tired but excited.

   There was a sense of newness in the air on the first day of spring.

Common combinations

the newness of something

The newness of the job made her nervous.

sense of newness

A sense of newness filled the house after we moved in.

wear off

The newness of the game began to wear off after a week.

lose its newness

The gadget lost its newness quickly.

smell of newness

The car had that smell of newness.

Synonyms and how they differ

novelty

Novelty stresses how interesting or exciting something unusual is, whereas newness simply describes being new.

freshness

Freshness suggests liveliness or lack of staleness, while newness is about not having existed or been used for long.

originality

Originality means being different from everything before it, while newness need not be unique, only recent.

Opposites

Word family

new adjective

recently made or not known before

newly adverb

very recently

newcomer noun

a person who has just arrived

renew verb

to make fresh or valid again

Commonly confused: newness or novelty?

Practice

Make it your own

Write a sentence using “newness”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.

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