Definition of "Nova"

Did you notice the dog which in the winter sports scenes is clasped in the arms of the child-star, Nova Pilbeam?

1935, Berta Ruck, A Story-Teller Tells the Truth, Hutchinson, page 266

He murmurs to himself, "Her body is twenty-two, but she is in the infancy of a second life. I will call her Nova, the New One."

1951, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mercury Press, page 71