Novel is considerably more complex than just new and even new is more nuanced; your new car could be as old as the Colpitts oscillator. Novel carries with it the unfamiliar and how that unfamiliarity alters our perception of what was once familiar. When you drive about in your new Model T everything is different, you are sitting considerably higher than you do in your old 240Z that you have driven since 1973 and its vertical windshield gives a far more limited view, its lack of power steering makes you aware of how sharp those curves in the road are and everyone notices you when you drive by. Then you take you old Datsun on a milk run and now it is more familiar than it was, you are aware of how intimately you respond to it and it responds to you but also of how its power steering removes some of the intimacy of driving and people stop talking to you about what you are driving because you have been driving that car since 1973 and everyone knows you as the person who has driven the same car since 1973, they ask you how your day is instead of complimenting your antique car. But the novelty eventually wears off and the old Model T becomes as familiar as your 240z.
Most in electronics never learn to drive without power steering, they view passive circuits as simple little things that need active components between them so they don't interact with each other in maddening ways but those interactions are not maddening once you understand them and learn to exploit them.
I don't think anyone used novel to mean rare.