Noun

Wikipedia

Singular history

Plural histories

history (plural histories)

1. The aggregate of past events.

   History repeats itself if we don’t learn from its mistakes.

   Holes in your pant pockets turn your coins into history.

2. The branch of knowledge that studies the past; the assessment of notable events.

   He teaches history at the university.

   History will not look kindly on these tyrants.

   He dreams of an invention that will make history.

3. A record or narrative description of past events.
4. (medicine) The list of past and continuing medical conditions of an individual or family.

   A personal medical history is required for the insurance policy.

   He has a history of cancer in his family.

5. (computing) A record of previous user events.

   I visted a great site yesterday but forgot the URL; oh! ... luckily I didn't clear my history.

Synonyms

• (aggregate of past events): past
• (record or narrative description of past events): account, chronicle, story, tale
• (medicine: list of past and continuing medical conditions): medical history
• (computing: record of previous user events): log

Derived terms

• alternate history
• art history
• call history
• case history
• credit history
• family history
• historian
• historic
• historical
• historically
• historiography

• history repeats itself
• investment history
• life history
• local history
• medical history
• natural history
• oral history
• postal history
• prehistory
• prehistorian
• prehistoric
• prosecution history

Related terms

• herstory

History (from Greek ἱστορία - historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation") is the study of the human past. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it sometimes attempts to investigate objectively the patterns of cause and effect that determine events. Historians debate the nature of history and its usefulness. This includes discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of providing "perspective" on the problems of the present. The stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the legends surrounding King Arthur) are usually classified as cultural heritage rather than the "disinterested investigation" needed by the discipline of history. Events of the past prior to written record are considered prehistory.

History is the study of human behavior through time. When used as the name of a field of study, history refers to the study and interpretation of past humans, families and societies as preserved primarily through written sources.

Sourced

• The end of history is, alas, also the end of the dustbins of history. There are no longer any dustbins for disposing of old ideologies, old regimes, old values. Where are we going to throw Marxism, which actually invented the dustbins of history? (Yet there is some justice here since the very people who invented them have fallen in.) Conclusion: if there are no more dustbins of history, this is because History itself has become a dustbin. It has become its own dustbin, just as the planet itself is becoming its own dustbin.
  • Jean Baudrillard, The Illusion of the End (1992), "The Event Strike", p. 26

• Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.
  • John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

• I don’t know much about history, and I wouldn’t give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.
  • Henry Ford, Interview in Chicago Tribune (25 May 1916)

• What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Introduction

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Wed Mar 10 13:23:54 2010