The Collaborative International Dictionary
History \His"to*ry\, n.; pl. Histories. [L. historia, Gr. 'istori`a history, information, inquiry, fr. 'istwr, "istwr, knowing, learned, from the root of ? to know; akin to E. wit. See Wit, and cf. Story.]
A learning or knowing by inquiry; the knowledge of facts and events, so obtained; hence, a formal statement of such information; a narrative; a description; a written record; as, the history of a patient's case; the history of a legislative bill.
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A systematic, written account of events, particularly of those affecting a nation, institution, science, or art, and usually connected with a philosophical explanation of their causes; a true story, as distinguished from a romance; -- distinguished also from annals, which relate simply the facts and events of each year, in strict chronological order; from biography, which is the record of an individual's life; and from memoir, which is history composed from personal experience, observation, and memory.
Histories are as perfect as the historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul.
--Carlyle.For aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history.
--Shak.What histories of toil could I declare!
--Pope.History piece, a representation in painting, drawing, etc., of any real event, including the actors and the action.
Natural history, a description and classification of objects in nature, as minerals, plants, animals, etc., and the phenomena which they exhibit to the senses.
Syn: Chronicle; annals; relation; narration.
Usage: History, Chronicle, Annals. History is a methodical record of important events which concern a community of men, usually so arranged as to show the connection of causes and effects, to give an analysis of motive and action etc. A chronicle is a record of such events, conforming to the order of time as its distinctive feature. Annals are a chronicle divided up into separate years. By poetic license annals is sometimes used for history.
Justly C[ae]sar scorns the poet's lays; It is to history he trusts for praise.
--Pope.No more yet of this; For 't is a chronicle of day by day, Not a relation for a breakfast.
--Shak.Many glorious examples in the annals of our religion.
--Rogers.
Wiktionary
n. (plural of history English)
Wikipedia
The Histories (; ; also known as The History) of Herodotus is now considered the founding work of history in Western literature. Written in 440 BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories serves as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various cultures that were known in Western Asia, Northern Africa and Greece at that time. Although not a fully impartial record, it remains one of the West's most important sources regarding these affairs. Moreover, it established the genre and study of history in the Western world (despite the existence of historical records and chronicles beforehand).
The Histories also stands as one of the first accounts of the rise of the Persian Empire, as well as the events and causes of the Greco-Persian Wars between the Achaemenid Empire and the Greek city-states in the 5th century BC. Herodotus portrays the conflict as one between the forces of slavery (the Persians) on the one hand, and freedom (the Athenians and the confederacy of Greek city-states which united against the invaders) on the other.
The Histories was at some point divided into the nine books that appear in modern editions, conventionally named after the nine Muses.
Histories or, in Latin, Historiae may refer to:
- the plural of history
- Histories (Herodotus), by Herodotus
- The Histories, by Timaeus
- The Histories (Polybius), by Polybius
- Histories by Gaius Sallustius Crispus (Sallust), of which only fragments survive
- Histories (Tacitus), by Tacitus
- Shakespeare's histories which define the theatrical genre History (theatrical genre)
Histories may also refer to:
- History of novels, an early term for the then emerging novel
- "Histories" (House), 10th episode in season 1 of House TV series
- Horrible Histories, a series of children's books written by Terry Deary
- Historians, those who write down an historical non-fiction
Histories is a Roman historical chronicle by Tacitus. Written c. 100–110, it covers the Year of Four Emperors following the downfall of Nero, as well as the period between the rise of the Flavian Dynasty (69–96) under Vespasian and the death of Domitian.
Together, the Histories and the Annals amounted to 30 books. Saint Jerome refers to these books explicitly, and about half of them have survived. Although scholars disagree on how to assign the books to each work, traditionally, 14 are assigned to Histories and 16b to the Annals. Tacitus' friend Pliny the Younger referred to "your histories" when writing to Tacitus about the earlier work.
By the time Tacitus had completed the Histories, it covered Roman history from AD 69, following Nero's death, to AD 96, the end of Domitian's reign. The Annals deals with the five decades before Nero, from AD 14, the reign of Tiberius, to AD 68, when Nero died.
Usage examples of "histories".
To the embarrassment of scholarship more than forty versions of the histories, or fragments thereof, were found cataloged, and apparently forgotten, in almost as many locations.
You have to remember that in some remote part of my brain the unsolved problem of my second flight through time—with the divergence of Histories I had witnessed—was still fermenting away, and I knew in my heart that my understanding of the philosophy behind this time traveling business was still limited, at best.
Suppose I accept your story about your trips into time and your visions of Histories and so forth.
I felt enormously reassured by all this—for the first time, I saw that there might be a glimmer of logic about the blizzard of conflicting Histories which had hailed about my head since my second launch into time!
I must let myself be influenced by my human instincts, for I was surely incapable of managing the evolution of Histories with any conscious direction.
Each of us, I thought, could do little to change the course of things—indeed, anything we tried was likely to—be so uncontrolled as to inflict more damage than benefit—and yet, conversely, we should not allow the huge panorama about us, the immensity of the Multiplicity of Histories, to overwhelm us.
It is even possible, though very unlikely, that in one of those Histories the thermal agitation of the ball's molecules will combine, and cause it to leap up in the air and hit you in the eye.
And, as we have seen from our own experience, when Time Machines operate—when objects travel into future or past to meet themselves—the chain of cause and effect can be disrupted, and Histories grow like weeds.
Indeed, it can pick out particular Histories of interest: it has a very subtle design.
Imagine yourself, in two such neighboring Histories, separated by—let us say—the details of the rebound of your billiard ball.
It is based on an implicit assumption that twin Histories, after their split, do not affect each other in any way.
But you must remember that I had already been granted a vision of one extremity of Time—its bitter End—in one of the Histories I had investigated: the very first, where I had watched the dying of the sun over that desolate beach.
And now I was forced to accept that, because of the endless calving-off of Histories, I could never return to 802,701—or, indeed, to my own time.
And Histories are like lines of longitude, drawn between the poles of the sphere.
When I had first witnessed the impact of my Time Machine on the unraveling of History, I had come to believe that my invention was a device of unparalleled evil, for its arbitrary destruction and distortion of Histories: for the elimination of millions of unborn human souls, with the barest flicker of my control levers.