Other forms: newer, newest
New means it has not existed or been used before. A new phone still in its box, new shoes that squeak on the floor, a new baby, the new teacher who started on Monday.
The word covers two ideas a learner should keep apart: newly made (a new car straight off the production line) and new to you (a new car that is ten years old and second-hand). It works for people and roles as well — the new manager, new in town, new to the software. Brand new means completely new, with the stress on untouched. The comparative is newer, the superlative newest, and the adverb newly lives in front of past participles: newly built, newly married, newly arrived. Note that news is not the plural of new but a noun of its own, and it takes a singular verb: the news is on at six.
1adjectivenewRecently made, bought or created; not used before.
“They bought a new sofa and gave the old one to a neighbour.”
2adjectiveknownNot known or experienced before, though not necessarily recent.
“The idea was new to me, but the book had been out for years.”
3adjectivearrivedRecently arrived in a place, job or role.
“She is new here and still learning where everything is kept.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
New is one of the oldest words English owns. It runs back through Old English niwe to Proto-Germanic niwjaz and on to Proto-Indo-European newos, and its relatives still look like it right across the map: Dutch nieuw, German neu, Danish ny. The Latin branch of the same root gave novel and novelty — new and novel are one ancient word arriving by two roads.
Middle English
newe
English, today
new
Built from
From Middle English newe. From Middle English neowe, neue, new, newe, nywe, from Old English nēowe, nīewe, nīowe, nīwe, from Proto-West Germanic niwi, from Proto-Germanic niwjaz (“new”), from Proto-Indo-European néwos, néwyos (“new”). Compare also Old English nū (“now”). More at now. a doublet of nuevo and novuss and neo-. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA