'antinovel' originates from a combination formed in English: the prefix 'anti-' (from Greek 'anti-' meaning 'against') joined to 'novel' (ultimately from Latin 'novellus' via Old French/Italian meaning 'new').

'antinovel' emerged as a critical and literary coinage in the 20th century (partly as a calque of French 'anti-roman'), used to describe works by modernist and postmodernist writers that consciously broke novelistic conventions; it stabilized in English literary criticism as 'antinovel'.

Initially it labeled a work positioned 'against' the traditional novel form; over time it became an established critical category for certain experimental, modernist/postmodernist works rather than only a polemical label.