English edit

Noun edit

dime novelist (plural dime novelists)

  1. One who writes dime novels.
    • 1873, John Frost, “William Cody.—‘Buffalo Bill.’—His Life and Adventures.”, in Frost’s Pictorial History of Indian Wars and Captivities, from the Earliest Record of American History to the Present Time. [], part first, New York, N.Y.: Wells Publishing Company, [], pages 333–334:
      Innumerable anecdotes are related of his prowess, and the stories of his hairbreath[sic] escapes and dangerous adventures while hunting and trapping—stories which have formed the warp and woof of the exaggerations of the dime novelists—would fill a volume even larger than this.
    • 2016, Derek Catron, chapter 7, in Trail Angel: A Frontier Epic of Love & Redemption, Waterville, Me.: Five Star, Gale, →ISBN, page 38:
      She’d heard stories of western gunfighters, heroic figures who might gun down three men before they fired a single shot. She assumed these to be the fevered imaginings of dime novelists.
    • 2017, William W[allace] Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone, chapter 8, in The Jensen Brand, New York, N.Y.: Pinnacle Books, Kensington Publishing Corp., →ISBN, pages 61–62:
      Smoke had always answered her questions honestly because he wanted her to know the truth, not what came from the fevered imaginations of whiskey-addled dime novelists, as he put it.