history

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A usually chronological record of events, as of the life or development of a people or institution, often including an explanation of or commentary on those events: a history of the Vikings.
2. n. A formal written account of related natural phenomena: a history of volcanoes.
3. n. A record of a patient's medical background.
4. n. An established record or pattern of behavior: an inmate with a history of substance abuse.
5. n. The branch of knowledge that records and analyzes past events: "History has a long-range perspective” ( Elizabeth Gurley Flynn).
6. n. The past events relating to a particular thing: The history of their rivalry is full of intrigue.
7. n. The aggregate of past events or human affairs: basic tools used throughout history.
8. n. An interesting past: a house with history.
9. n. Something that belongs to the past: Their troubles are history now.
10. n. Slang One that is no longer worth consideration: Why should we worry about him? He's history!
11. n. A drama based on historical events: the histories of Shakespeare.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A narrative, oral or written, of past events; a story: as, a history of England; a history of the civil war; a history of an individual.
2. n. The recorded events of the past; also, that branch of science which is occupied with ascertaining and recording the facts of the past. History may deal with the past development of human affairs as a whole, or with some special phase of human activity, as in political history, ecclesiastical history, the history of philosophy, etc.; or with the life of animals, as in natural history; or with inorganic nature, as in geological history; but with reference to the lower animals and to inanimate nature the term has often no special implication of past time (see natural history, below).
3. n. Recorded or accomplished fact; also, the aggregate of the events, recorded or unrecorded, which mark a given period of past time, as in the development of an individual or of a race, etc.: as, a checkered history.
4. n. An eventful career; a past worthy of record: as, a man with a history.
5. n. In liturgics, in medieval English uses, as in the Use of Sarum, the series of responsories to a set of lections from the historical or other books of Scripture. The history was named from the initial words of the first responsory, and these were often also used as the name of the Sunday on which the history was said, or of the period following during which the lections continued to be taken from the book then begun.
6. n. A historical play or drama.
7. To record; relate.

Wiktionary

1. n. The aggregate of past events.
2. n. The branch of knowledge that studies the past; the assessment of notable events.
3. n. A record or narrative description of past events.
4. n. The list of past and continuing medical conditions of an individual or family.
5. n. A record of previous user events.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. 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
2. n. 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.
3. v. To narrate or record.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the continuum of events occurring in succession leading from the past to the present and even into the future
2. n. the aggregate of past events
3. n. all that is remembered of the past as preserved in writing; a body of knowledge
4. n. a record or narrative description of past events
5. n. the discipline that records and interprets past events involving human beings