history Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun the aggregate of past events
    • a critical time in the school's history
  2. noun a record or narrative description of past events
    account; story; chronicle.
    • a history of France
    • he gave an inaccurate account of the plot to kill the president
    • the story of exposure to lead
  3. noun the discipline that records and interprets past events involving human beings
    • he teaches Medieval history
    • history takes the long view
  4. noun the continuum of events occurring in succession leading from the past to the present and even into the future
    • all of human history
  5. noun all that is remembered of the past as preserved in writing; a body of knowledge
    • the dawn of recorded history
    • from the beginning of history

WordNet

His"to*ry noun
Etymology
L.historia, Gr. 'istori`a history, information, inquiry, fr. 'istwr, "istwr, knowing, learned, from the root of to know; akin to E. wit. See Wit, and cf. Story.
Wordforms
plural Histories
Definitions
  1. A learning or knowing by inquiry; the knowledge of facts and events, so obtained; hence, a formal statement of such information; a narrative; a description; a written record; as, the history of a patient's case; the history of a legislative bill.
  2. A systematic, written account of events, particularly of those affecting a nation, institution, science, or art, and usually connected with a philosophical explanation of their causes; a true story, as distinguished from a romance; -- distinguished also from annals, which relate simply the facts and events of each year, in strict chronological order; from biography, which is the record of an individual's life; and from memoir, which is history composed from personal experience, observation, and memory.
    Histories are as perfect as the historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul. Carlyle.
    For aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history. Shak.
    What histories of toil could I declare! Pope.
    Syn. -- Chronicle; annals; relation; narration. -- History, Chronicle, Annals. History is a methodical record of important events which concern a community of men, usually so arranged as to show the connection of causes and effects, to give an analysis of motive and action etc. A chronicle is a record of such events, conforming to the order of time as its distinctive feature. Annals are a chronicle divided up into separate years. By poetic license annals is sometimes used for history.
    Justly Cæsar scorns the poet's lays; It is to history he trusts for praise. Pope.
    No more yet of this; For 't is a chronicle of day by day, Not a relation for a breakfast. Shak.
    Many glorious examples in the annals of our religion. Rogers.
His"to*ry transitive verb
Definitions
  1. To narrate or record. Obs. Shak.

Webster 1913