The concept of novelty is central to questions of creativity, innovation, and discovery. Despite the prominence in scientific inquiry and everyday discourse, there is a chronic ambiguity over its meaning and a surprising variety of empirical measures, which muddle the interpretation of prior findings and frustrate the consolidation of knowledge. To help dispel some of the unclarity, this paper presents a survey and synthesis of conceptualizations and operationalizations of novelty scattered across social, cognitive, and organizational studies. From this analysis, I advance the argument that novelty is generally regarded as a function of frequency or proximity, and in these two complementary perspectives, it is commonly bounded its empirical study and theoretical understanding. I further argue that contextual and temporal aspects are integral to the specification of novelty and primary contributors to its multifaceted nature.