- new
- new adj New, novel, new-fashioned, newfangled, modern, modernistic, original, fresh can all mean having very recently come into existence or use or into a connection, a position, or a state (as of being recognized).A thing is new that has never before the time of its advent been known, thought of, manufactured, or experienced, or that is just ready for use, sale, or circulation, or that has just been acquired{
new books
}{new ideas
}{a new washing machine
}{no man putteth new wine into old bottles— Mk 2:22
}{a new way of dressing her hair
}A person is new if he has just been taken into a military, business, social, or other group{a new soldier
}{a new stenographer
}{three new members
}or if he has received his first experience{he was . . . frightened, being new to the sight— Dickens
}or if he has been renewed in spirit or in mind or in body{the quiet hills which I am now seeing again, with a new and contented eye— O'Connor
}{the hot food made a new man of him
}A thing is novel which is not only new but so out of the ordinary course as to strike one as strange, unusual, or unfamiliar{novel forms of government, like those of Russia and Italy— Frankfurter
}{novel schemes of salvation— L. P. Smith
}{sermons . . . bold in thought and novel in language— Wharton
}A thing is new-fashioned which is so different in form, shape, style, or character from what was previously known that it challenges curiosity or has only recently met general acceptance{new-fashioned modes of painting
}{new-fashioned hats for women are regarded as absurd by many men
}{the type of old-fashioned scholarship . . . the type of new-fashioned criticism— S. E. Hyman
}A thing is newfangled which strikes one as unnecessarily or as ingeniously novel; often, however, the term differs little from new except in suggesting disparagement{newfangled toys
}{newfangled theories of art
}{a newfangled nomenclature— Hamilton
}{quite a modern hostelry for its time. It had such newfangled doodads as mechanical dishwashers and potato peelers— Green Peyton
}A person or thing is modern that belongs to the present time or is especially characteristic of it; the term often implies up-to-dateness and novelty or a contrast with what has been long accepted and still is the choice of the conservative: in this special sense modernistic may be preferred to modern, but more often modernistic carries a contemptuous suggestion of the ephemerally novel{when I refer to modern music, I do not mean necessarily modernistic music, much of which is a pale afterglow of the great and original modernism of yesteryear— Virgil Thomson
}Modern, however, is always preferred to modernistic when contemporaneousness only is implied{in modern art atmosphere counts for so much— Wilde
}{this strange disease of modern life, with its sick hurry, its divided aims, its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts— Arnold
}But modern is also applicable to things of more remote origin than any of the other terms ; as opposed to ancient and medieval it usually implies reference to the centuries beginning with the full Renaissance up to the present{modern languages
}{modern civilizations
}Often, however, the dividing line between what is modern and what is too far distant in time to be called modern has to be supplied by the context{the Victorian era gave way to the modern age of machinery
}{most modern well-to-do Englishmen and Americans, if they were transported by magic into the age of Elizabeth, would wish themselves back in the modern world— Russell
}A person or thing is original that is or produces something new or novel and, at the same time, the first of its kind{that he would be successful in an original way, or that he would go to the dogs in an original way, seemed equally probable— Hardy
}{they contain no new ideas . . . [he] was anything but an original thinker— R. A. Hall
}{some areas were occupied by savages, in others there were brilliant and original civilizations— Poole
}A thing is fresh that is or seems so new that it has not had time to lose the signs of newness, such as liveliness, energy, brightness, or virginal quality{fresh footprints
}{receive a fresh impetus
}{make a fresh start
}{this was a new voice falling upon the attentive ears of youth—a fresh challenge to its native and impetuous generosity— Repplier
}{a great shouting at the coal works because a fresh vein of coal had been discovered— Woolf
}Antonyms: old
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
