Chronology

How to spell chronology

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce chronology

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chronology mean?

1. nounThe arrangement of events in the order in which they occurred over time.
2. nounThe branch of study concerned with determining the dates of past events.

Chronology in a sentence

• The detective rebuilt the chronology of the burglary from the security footage.

• Radiocarbon dating transformed the chronology used by archaeologists.

• The museum exhibit lays out the chronology of the kings in a single timeline.

• His thesis applied modern chronology to the records of the medieval trade routes.

Where does chronology come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word is built from two Greek elements: khronos, meaning 'time', and logia, meaning 'a speaking, study, or account', from logos 'word, reason'. Put together they describe an account of events arranged in order of time. The compound passed into Latin as chronologia and reached English in the early 1600s, when scholars were busy fixing dates for ancient history and needed a term for the science of ordering events. The same khronos root sits inside familiar relatives such as 'chronic' (lasting over time), 'chronicle', and 'synchronise', and remembering that the family always opens with 'chron-' helps fix the awkward silent-looking 'ch' at the start. The '-logy' ending, shared with biology, geology, and dozens of other fields of study, is the second reliable anchor for the spelling.

How the word is built

• chrono- (from Greek khronos: time)
• -logy (from Greek logia: study or account)