historical

English Online Dictionary. What means historical‎? What does historical mean?

English

Alternative forms

• historicall (obsolete)

Etymology

From Latin historicus (“historical”) +‎ -al (forming adjectives denoting of or relating to).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /hɪˈstɒɹɪkəl/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /hɪˈstɔɹɪkəl/
• (NYC) IPA^(key): /hɪˈstɑɹɪkəl/

Adjective

historical (comparative more historical, superlative most historical)

1. Of, concerning, or in accordance with recorded history, (particularly) as opposed to legends, myths, and fictions.
   1. (literature, art) About history; depicting persons or events from history.
2. Of, concerning, or in accordance with the past generally.
   1. (literature, art) Set in the past.
   2. (uncommon) Former, erstwhile; (religious, obsolete) lapsed, nominal.
      • 1886, Jacob Boehme translated by John Ellistone in Works, volume 1, epistle 2, §49, page 39:

        But concerning some persons of your neighbourhood... their Confession [of Faith] is rather an opinion than a true and sincere earnestness, for all of them are not that which they boast and glory to be; there may be many honest hearts among them; but many of them are only historical and titular, and desire only to show themselves, and to be applauded ...

   3. (grammar) One of various tenses or moods used to tell about past events, historic (tense).
   4. (obsolete, biology) Synonym of hereditary or evolutionary.
3. Of, concerning, or in accordance with the scholarly discipline of history.
   1. Done in the manner of a historian: written as a development over time or in accordance with the historical method.
   2. (uncommon) Synonym of historic: important or likely to be important to history and historians.
4. Forming compound adjectives with the meaning "historical/~" or "historically":

Usage notes

• Like many terms that start with a non-silent h but have emphasis on their second syllable, some people precede historical with an, others with a.
• Historic and historical are variants of one another and have shared the same meaning (related to history) for much of their history. In present usage, however, a distinction is often made between the two: historic is used as an adjective for the study of history, while historical is used as an adjective for the events of the past. As such, historic is used to describe people, things, and events that are or will be considered important by future historians, while historical is used for people, things, and events in the past, whether important or not. A "historic event" is an important moment past, present, or in the future; a "historical event" is some moment in the past.

Synonyms

• (see usage note): historic, (obsolete): historial
• (about earlier times): past, bygone, former, old, ancient; see also Thesaurus:past

Antonyms

• (antonym(s) of "inaccurate accounts of the past"): ahistorical, anachronistic; see also Thesaurus:anachronistic
• (antonym(s) of "now: not in the past"): modern, contemporary, present, present-day; see also Thesaurus:present or Thesaurus:contemporary
• (antonym(s) of "later: not in the past"): future, projected, expected; see also Thesaurus:future

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

historical (plural historicals)

1. A historical romance.

References