Meaning & use
chronicle
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Meanings
nouncountable
A written account of events set down in the order they happened.
Grammar: A countable noun: a chronicle, two chronicles; often followed by of.
Patterns
- a chronicle of something
The monk kept a chronicle of every harvest and famine in the valley.
Her book is a chronicle of the town's rise and decline.
Medieval chronicles are valuable but often biased.
nouncountablefigurative
Any detailed story of a long series of events, especially one that shows how something changed.
Grammar: Often used figuratively with a thing as the subject: the film is a chronicle of a family's struggles.
Patterns
- a chronicle of something
The documentary is a moving chronicle of one village's recovery after the flood.
His diary became a chronicle of the whole expedition.
verbtransitive
To write down or report events in detail, in the order they occurred.
Grammar: Takes an object: chronicle the war, not chronicle about the war.
Patterns
- chronicle something
- chronicle how something happened
The reporter chronicled the town's slow recovery over five years.
Her memoir chronicles a childhood spent moving between countries.
Letters from the front chronicled each stage of the campaign.
Word forms
| plural | chronicles |
|---|---|
| third person singular | chronicles |
| past tense | chronicled |
| past participle | chronicled |
| -ing form | chronicling |
Common combinations
- a medieval chronicle
- A medieval chronicle records the great fire of the city.
- chronicle events
- Journalists chronicle events as they unfold.
- chronicle the rise of
- The book chronicles the rise of the personal computer.
- a detailed chronicle
- She produced a detailed chronicle of the company's early years.
- chronicle a life
- The biography chronicles a life of quiet determination.
Synonyms and how they differ
- record
- Record is broader, covering any kind of written or stored information, while chronicle emphasizes events in time order.
- account
- An account can tell one episode from one point of view, but a chronicle covers a longer run of events.
- annals
- Annals are year-by-year records of an institution and sound more formal and official than chronicle.
- narrate
- Narrate means to tell a story aloud or in writing, without the suggestion of careful historical recording.
Word family
- chronicler noun
- a person who writes a chronicle
- chronological adjective
- arranged in the order events happened
- chronology noun
- the order in which events occurred, or a list showing it
- chronically adverb
- over a long time, often of an illness
Commonly confused: chronicle or chronic?
chronicle vs chronic
Chronic describes something that lasts a long time, like an illness, whereas a chronicle is a record of events.
Practice
The historian's new book will ___ the first hundred years of the railway.
Choose one answer.
After will you need a base verb, and chronicle is the verb meaning to record events; chronic and chronologically are not verbs and chronicler is a noun.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “chronicle”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.