Other forms: serials
A serial is a story served in instalments, one episode at a time, each ending somewhere that makes you come back. Radio dramas, novels printed chapter by chapter in a newspaper, the box set you ration to one a night.
As an adjective, serial means one after another in a line, which is where serial killer comes from, someone who kills repeatedly over a long period. The pattern spreads freely: a serial offender, a serial entrepreneur, a serial complainer. A serial number is the code that marks one machine out of a long line of identical ones, and in computing a serial port sends data one bit after another. Two things to watch. Serial and cereal sound the same, and cereal is the breakfast one. And a serial is not a series: a serial tells one continuing story, a series is a set of separate episodes.
1nounserialA story published or broadcast in separate parts over a period of time.
“The novel first appeared as a serial in a Sunday newspaper.”
2adjectiverepeatedlyDoing the same thing repeatedly over a long period.
“In court he was described as a serial offender.”
3adjectivearrangedArranged or happening one after another in a sequence.
“Each engine carries a serial number stamped into the casing.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
serial is a story told in parts.
Serial is a made word rather than an inherited one. English built it from series plus -al, on the model of Latin seriālis, itself seriēs plus -ālis. It first appears around 1823, in the century when readers met most long novels one instalment at a time.
Latin
seriālis
English, today
serial
Formed as series + al, on model of Latin seriālis, from seriēs + -ālis. Cognate to Italian seriale. First use appears c. 1823. See cite below.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA