roman

Samuel Johnson, writing in his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), [defined] "novel [as] a small tale, generally of love." To modern sensibilities, Johnson's novel resembles more closely the novella in dimension and the romance in substance. … [T]he term romance, or roman, once interchangeable with novel in English, retains the meaning of novel in Germany, France, Russia, and most of Europe, while in the anglophone world it has been demoted to frivolity.