Skip to content
OneKitly

innovation

nounattested in dialogue

  • //ˌɪn.əˈveɪ.ʃən//

The act of innovating; the introduction of something new, in customs, rites, etc.

noun

  1. 1

    The act of innovating; the introduction of something new, in customs, rites, etc.

    The US supreme court has ruled unanimously that natural human genes cannot be patented, a decision that scientists and civil rights campaigners said removed a major barrier to patient care and medical innovation. […] He said there would be "considerable danger" that without such an exception, the granting of patent would "tie up" the use of such tools and future innovation based on them.

    Innovation is more than a new method. It is a new view of the universe, as one of risk rather than of chance or of certainty. It is a new view of man's role in the universe; he creates order by taking risks. And this means that innovation, rather than being an assertion of human power, is an acceptance of human responsibility.

  2. 2

    A change effected by innovating; a change in customs.

  3. 3

    Something new, and contrary to established customs, manners, or rites.

    One of the remarkable innovations in concrete technology is the development of self-healing cementitious materials through the incorporation of bacterial agents.

  4. 4

    A newly formed shoot, or the annually produced addition to the stems of many mosses.

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French innovation, from Old French innovacion, from Late Latin innovatio, innovationem, from Latin innovo, innovatus. Morphologically innovate + -ion.

Forms

plural
innovations
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).