Histories

How to spell histories

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce histories

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does histories mean?

1. nounWritten or recorded accounts of past events, or the study of the past in plural form.
2. nounThe recorded accounts of patients' past illnesses, treatments, and symptoms.

Histories in a sentence

• The library keeps several detailed histories of the local mining industry.

• The nurse reviewed the patients' medical histories before the clinic opened.

• Both candidates have long histories of public service behind them.

• Family histories of heart disease can guide a doctor's advice.

Where does histories come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word descends from the ancient Greek historia, which originally meant an inquiry or the knowledge gained by investigation, built on the verb that meant to learn or know by asking. In classical usage it described a written account based on such inquiry, the sense that the Greek writer Herodotus made famous when he titled his great work Historiai. Latin took the word in as historia, and Old French passed it to English as historie around the 1300s, where it first covered any account or story of past events. The narrower meaning, the formal study and record of the past, sharpened over the following centuries, while the same root still survives in the more casual word 'story'. The plural is formed regularly: the final 'y' shifts to 'ies', which is the small spelling step most writers need to watch.

How the word is built

• histor- (from Greek historia: inquiry, knowledge)
• -y (noun suffix)
• -es (plural; -y becomes -ies)