Definition of "new wave" [new wave]

• A movement in French cinema in the 1960s, led by directors such as Jean Luc Godard and François Truffaut, that abandoned traditional narrative techniques in favor of greater use of symbolism and abstraction and dealt with themes of social alienation, psychopathology, and sexual love. Also called nouvelle vague. (noun)
• Any of various new movements in cinema, especially one led by a group of experimental filmmakers. (noun)
• An avant-garde or experimental movement, as in the arts. (noun)
• Music A style of rock music popularized in the early 1980s, marked by the use of synthesizers. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It bears a closer resemblance to works such as Island Life and The Geographical Distribution of Animals, published eighty years earlier by Alfred Russel Wallace, than to the new wave of biogeographical studies that came immediately after it."
• "And there is a new wave of interest in results-based and output-based aid, both of which subsidize development projects using a mechanism similar to the advance market commitment for vaccines: The funding is all performance-based."
• "She grew up in the post-Hughes era, first on animated musicals and then on a new wave of teen flicks that set high schoolers back a few decades."