historical

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. adj. Of or relating to the character of history.
2. adj. Based on or concerned with events in history.
3. adj. Used in the past: historical costumes; historical weapons.
4. adj. Important or famous in history. See Usage Note at historic.
5. adj. Diachronic.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Of, pertaining to, or connected with history; containing or of the nature or character of history: as, a historical poem; historical evidence; a historical chart.
2. Narrated or mentioned in history; belonging to the past, and mentioned or used at present only with reference to the past. In this sense the terms of archæology, ancient and medieval art, law, etc., as used in modern books with reference to the past, are historical, and are thus distinguished from obsolete words, such as have no present use at all.
3. In philosophy, pertaining to things learned from the testimony of others or by our own senses.
4. In grammar, used in statement of past facts or narration of past events: as, a historical tense. The historical present is the present tense used in vivid narration, as in the following passage: “And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet.” (Mark v. 22.) In Greek grammar the tenses purely past in meaning— that is, the imperfect, aorist (English simple preterit without have), and the pluperfect indicative—are called historical tenses, as distinguished from the present, future, and perfect (English preterit with have), the perfect not being accounted a past tense. (See perfect.) In Latin, also, the corresponding tenses are called historical, and, as the Latin perfect answers in meaning both to the Greek aorist and to the Greek perfect, when used as an aorist it is distinguished as the historical perfect. The infinitive can be used in Latin in narration, and is then called the historical infinitive.
5. In hydrodynamics, the Lagrangian method, which considers the path of each particle.
6. In biology, ancestral or inherited, or due to conditions which existed in the past history of an organism.

Wiktionary

1. adj. Pertaining to the history, to what happened in the past.

WordNet 3.0

1. adj. belonging to the past; of what is important or famous in the past
2. adj. used of the study of a phenomenon (especially language) as it changes through time
3. adj. having once lived or existed or taken place in the real world as distinct from being legendary
4. adj. of or relating to the study of history