Historically

How to spell historically

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce historically

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does historically mean?

1. adverbWith reference to the past or to the way things were at an earlier time.

Historically in a sentence

• Historically, this region produced most of the country's coal.

• The report notes that interest rates are historically low at present.

Where does historically come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek historia, which literally meant 'inquiry' or 'knowledge gained by investigation', from the related word histor, a 'learned man' or 'judge' who knows things. The Greeks used historia for any organised account of what had been found out, and over time it narrowed toward the written record of past events. Latin took it over as historia, and it travelled into English through Old French during the medieval period, giving us 'history'. The adjective 'historical' was then built with the Latin-derived ending -ical, and the adverb 'historically' simply adds -ly on top. The spelling trap lives in that ending: the word keeps the full -ical before -ly, producing the double-l 'cally' that writers often shorten by mistake.

How the word is built

• histor- (from Greek historia: inquiry, account of past events)
• -ical (adjective suffix)
• -ly (adverb suffix)