[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]
A borrowing from American Spanish, the American-English noun telenovela designates, especially in Latin America, a Spanish-language or Portuguese-language television soap opera.
(This English noun is occasionally written telenovella, probably after the English noun novella, designating a short novel, a long short story.)
The noun telenovela occurs, for example, in the following from Our critics pick the 30 best albums of 2025, published in the Boston Sunday Globe (Boston, Massachusetts, USA) of Sunday 28th December 2025 [page N5, column 3]:
Karol G, “Tropicoqueta”
Colombian-born artist Karol G showed why she’s one of the most popular and creative forces in reggae with this sprawling concept album that uses a broad range of pan-Latin styles, as well as visual storytelling to create an ode to the telenovela. Like with any good soap opera, there’s excitement, drama, and plenty of steamy moments. (Noah Schaffer)
The American-Spanish noun telenovela is from tele- in televisión and the noun novela, i.e., a novel.
The noun telenovela was modelled on the following Spanish nouns:
– fotonovela, designating a photonovel, i.e., a usually romantic story told in a sequence of photographs with dialogue added in superimposed speech balloons;
– radionovela, designating a radio soap opera.
The earliest use of the noun telenovela that I have found in American Spanish is from Noticias en Síntesis, by Carlos Deviere, published in the Diario Las Américas (Miami, Florida, USA) of Thursday 19th November 1959 [page 6, column 3]—the following is a review of the final episode of El Derecho de Nacer (The Right to Be Born), a Puerto-Rican telenovela by the Cuban author and broadcaster Félix B. Caignet (1892-1976):
San Juan, Puerto Rico.—[…] El esperado final apoteósico de “El Derecho de Nacer”, que tanta candela dió, resultó un fiasco… Algo pasó tras bastidores, pero la telenovela de Cagnet [sic] sufiró un colapso en su capítulo final.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest uses of the noun telenovela that I have found in American English:
1-: From Foreign TV Reviews, published in Variety (New York City, New York, USA) of Wednesday 29th November 1961 [page 40, column 1]:
CONDOMINIO
[…]
Channel 2. Mexico City.
This episode of what is known here as a “Telenovela,” but known in the States as “Soap Opera,” was entitled “Padre e Hijo” (Father and Son) and had to do with a father telling his son what a harrowing experience he had in Apartment 301 in the Condominio, a building where you buy your apartment instead of rent it. Each week the episode takes place in a different apartment.
[…]
The program was so cut up with commercials that it was difficult to not lose the story. […]
There is a trend here to produce “soapers” as spot carriers rather than one-sponsor programs since more revenue can be realized in this way.
2-: From The Image of KMEX: Good, Bad, by Pepe Arciga, published in the Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California, USA) of Thursday 18th October 1962 [part 4, page 20, column 1]:
Well, it’s here, UHF television flavored in Espanol (beamed through KMEX-TV Channel 34), newest member of the Southland’s prosperous Spanish-language broadcasting family […].
[…]
[…] Let’s examine at random some of KMEX’s more notable offerings as well as those not-so-notable:
[…]
Tele-Novelas (soap operas Monday through Sunday) are extremely tight in story content. Although over-all acting is good, matters take a turn for the worse when producers absurdly turn to musical scoring of “Victory at Sea” to dramatize certain scenes. Students of Spanish should profit here.
Over-saturation of this kind of fare may be economical to broadcasters, I’m sure, but since viewers care little for such details their reaction is easy to anticipate—click, let’s go back to regular channels.
3-: From the column The Film Scene, by Gerard Pratley, published in the Toronto Daily Star (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) of Saturday 15th December 1962 [page 24, column 2]:
Acapulco—The Mexicans like their films and titles to be melodramatic, filled with passion and meaning. […]
[…]
The Mexican television system is in private hands, but not inclined to give away their time to American programs. Soap operas take up about three hours a day, and are called “tele-novelas.”
word histories 