Other forms: novices
A novice is somebody just beginning at something. A complete novice, novice riders, a novice at chess.
It is neutral and often self-applied, which is unusual for a word about inexperience. In religious orders a novice is somebody in the trial period before taking vows, which is the older and stricter sense of the word.
1nounnoviceSomebody just beginning at something.
“As a complete novice, I spent most of my first ski lesson falling over.”
novice is a beginner.
Latin novicius means newly arrived, from novus, new.
Proto-Indo-European
*new- (new)
Latin
novīcius
Middle French
novice
Anglo-Norman
novice
Middle English
novice
English, today
novice
Built from
From Middle English novice, novys, from Anglo-Norman novice, Middle French novice, itself borrowed from Latin novīcius, later novitius (“new, newly arrived”) (in Latin - as a noun, masculine novicius, feminine novicia (“one who has newly entered a monastery or a convent”)), from novus (“new”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA