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History vocabulary · Historiography and Historical Thinking

Hindsight

Meaning in history, with examples

/ˈhaɪndsaɪt/nounCommon term

In history, hindsight means: Understanding of an event or situation that comes only after it has happened, when its results are already known.

In Turkish: geriye dönük bakış, sonradan görme, sonradan edinilen bilgi

How it is used

Mostly in the phrases with hindsight and in hindsight. Historians warn against it, because people in the past did not know how things would turn out. Hindsight bias is the tendency to see past events as more predictable than they really were.

Example sentences

  1. With hindsight, the crisis looks inevitable, but few people at the time expected it.

  2. We have the benefit of hindsight; the ministers of 1914 did not.

Common collocations

  • with hindsight
  • in hindsight
  • the benefit of hindsight
  • hindsight bias
  • anachronismSomething placed in the wrong period, such as an object, word or idea, or the mistake of judging the past by the standards and concepts of a later time.
  • interpretationA particular explanation of what past events meant or why they happened, based on the evidence and on the historian's questions and point of view.
  • turning pointA moment or event that causes an important change in the direction of history, after which things develop differently.
  • contextThe circumstances, ideas and events of the time in which something happened or was written, which help explain its meaning.

More terms: Historiography and Historical Thinking

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