The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dime \Dime\ (d[imac]m), n. [F. d[^i]me tithe, OF. disme, fr. L. decimus the tenth, fr. decem ten. See Decimal.] A silver coin of the United States, of the value of ten cents; the tenth of a dollar.
Dime novel, a novel, commonly sensational and trashy, which is sold for a dime, or ten cents; -- they were popular from ca. 1850 to ca. 1920. Sometimes the term is still applied to any novel of the type, though the price has greatly increased.
Wiktionary
n. (context US dated English) A cheap pulp novel produced in 19th century America.
WordNet
n. a melodramatic paperback novel [syn: penny dreadful]
Wikipedia
The dime novel is a form of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular fiction issued in series of inexpensive paperbound editions. The term dime novel has been used as a catchall term for several different but related forms, referring to dime novels, story papers, five- and ten-cent weeklies, "thick book" reprints, and sometimes early pulp magazines. The term was used as a title as late as 1940, in the short-lived pulp magazine Western Dime Novels. Dime novels are the antecedent of today's mass-market paperbacks, comic books, television shows and movies based on dime-novel genres. In the modern age, the term dime novel has been used to refer to quickly written, lurid potboilers, usually as a pejorative to describe a sensationalized but superficial literary work.
Usage examples of "dime novel".
The dime novel, however, pretends to joke, but then it shows us the world as it actually is—.
When I tapped on the glass, the little old lady came 'round, thumb holding her place in a dime novel.
But on our latest cattle drive, my brother and I finally have had a genuine dime novel-type adventure.
He's a half-pint imitation of Black Jack Slade, the desperado of dime novel fame.
It sometimes sounds like dime novel stuff, but it was true that a man acquired a reputation as a gunman and that others envied him and challenged him because of it.
If Asa weren't so much a man, she'd have started thinking he was one of those sissies in the dime novel she'd read once.
When I reached this place I learned that I was wrong and that it wasn't a dime novel after all.