Meaning & use
history
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Meanings
noununcountable
Everything that happened in the past, or the academic study of those events and how they shaped the present.
Grammar: Usually no plural and no article: she studies history, not a history.
Patterns
- the history of something
- history of something
My brother is studying history at university.
The history of the town goes back almost a thousand years.
Many people visit the museum to learn about local history.
nouncountable
The record of what someone or something has done or experienced over time, such as past illnesses, jobs or behavior.
Grammar: Takes an or the when it names one person's record: she has a history of back pain.
Patterns
- a history of something
- someone's history
The doctor asked about my family's medical history.
He has a history of arriving late to meetings.
Check the browser history to find the page you visited.
nouncountable
A written account or book that tells the story of past events or of a particular subject.
Grammar: Counted like any noun: two histories of the war.
Patterns
- a history of something
She wrote a short history of the railway in our region.
The library has several histories of ancient Rome.
Word forms
| plural | histories |
|---|
Common combinations
- ancient history
- We studied ancient history in the first term.
- medical history
- Please fill in your medical history before the appointment.
- go down in history
- The match will go down in history as the longest ever played.
- a long history
- The family business has a long history.
- rewrite history
- You cannot rewrite history, but you can learn from it.
Synonyms and how they differ
- past
- Refers to earlier time in general, while history stresses events that are studied or recorded.
- record
- Means a documented set of facts, whereas history for a person covers the whole course of what happened.
- background
- Focuses on experience or circumstances that explain a person or situation, usually in less detail than history.
Opposites
Word family
- historian noun
- a person who studies or writes about the past
- historic adjective
- important in history
- historical adjective
- relating to the past or to the study of it
- historically adverb
- in a way that relates to the past
Commonly confused: history or historic?
history vs historic
Historic means important enough to be remembered, as in a historic win. Historical simply means connected with the past, as in historical records.
Practice
Which sentence uses history to mean a person's past record?
Choose one answer.
Only the second sentence refers to a personal record of past health; the others mean the subject, the past of a country, or a written account.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “history”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.