historical
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
About history; depicting persons or events from history.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
hihstawrihkuhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
hɪsˈtɔɹɪkəl
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Of, concerning, or in accordance with recorded history, (particularly) as opposed to legends, myths, and fictions.
literatureart
Of or relating to the study of history
Of, concerning, or in accordance with the scholarly discipline of history.
literatureart
About history; depicting persons or events from history.
Done in the manner of a historian: written as a development over time or in accordance with the historical method.
Forming compound adjectives with the meaning "historical/~" or "historically"
noun
A historical romance.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Academic
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Of, concerning, or in accordance with recorded history, (particularly) as opposed to legends, myths, and fictions.
Used this way, historical is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in historical writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Historical writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use historical
- “Historical scholars.”adjective
Share your sentence
Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Concerning
About / various
Done
Study
Other combinations
Tap the highlighted word to open its own entry.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
The aggregate of past events.
Throughout history.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Writing having historical value (as opposed to fiction or myth etc.).
A school of 19th century German economists and legal philosophers who tried to explain modern economic systems in evolutionary or historical terms.
Writing having historical value (as opposed to fiction or myth etc.).
The study of linguistic change.
Writing having historical value (as opposed to fiction or myth etc.).
The use of the present tense to describe past actions or states.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: of or concerning
Commonly Confused With
Use This Word
See how this word sounds in a real sentence.
Ask Vocabaura
Understand the word your way.
What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
Use it yourself
Knowing “historical” starts when you use it. Pick a next step, all free.
Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.