NOVICE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does novice mean? 

• NOVICE (noun)
  The noun NOVICE has 2 senses:

1. someone who has entered a religious order but has not taken final vows

2. someone new to a field or activity

  Familiarity information: NOVICE used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• NOVICE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone who has entered a religious order but has not taken final vows

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

novice; novitiate

Hypernyms ("novice" is a kind of...):

religious person (a person who manifests devotion to a deity)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Someone new to a field or activity

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

beginner; initiate; novice; tiro; tyro

Hypernyms ("novice" is a kind of...):

unskilled person (a person who lacks technical training)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "novice"):

abecedarian (a novice learning the rudiments of some subject)

apprentice; learner; prentice (works for an expert to learn a trade)

cub; greenhorn; rookie (an awkward and inexperienced youth)

landlubber; landsman; lubber (an inexperienced sailor; a sailor on the first voyage)

entrant; fledgeling; fledgling; freshman; neophyte; newbie; newcomer; starter (any new participant in some activity)

tenderfoot (an inexperienced person (especially someone inexperienced in outdoor living))

trainee (someone who is being trained)

 Context examples 

A light and a pattern to every novice.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

What! a novice not worship her priest!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It gave me no manner of concern that Steerforth should find me a novice in these sciences, but I never could bear to show my want of skill before the respectable Littimer.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

"Not a first attempt, I take it?" observing that the pages were numbered, covered only on one side, and not tied up with a ribbon—sure sign of a novice.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I feel like a novice lumbering through a bog in a mist, jumping from one tussock to another in the mere blind effort to move on without knowing where I am going.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Lord John was an experienced mountaineer, and Summerlee had done some rough climbing at various times, so that I was really the novice at rock-work of the party; but my strength and activity may have made up for my want of experience.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“I have been cloister-bred, and it was no very great matter to handle the brush better than my brother novices.”

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference—equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world to a dependent and a novice.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

At this order a lay-brother swung open the door, and two other lay-brothers entered leading between them a young novice of the order.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Where is the master of the novices?

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)