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History vocabulary · Historiography and Historical Thinking

Historian

Meaning in history, with examples

/hɪˈstɔːriən/nounCore term

In history, historian means: A person who studies and writes about the past, usually by examining sources, comparing evidence and offering an interpretation of events.

In Turkish: tarihçi

How it is used

Used for academics and serious writers. Historians argue, suggest, debate and disagree; essays often say most historians agree that... You can name the field: a military historian, an art historian, an economic historian, a historian of medieval Anatolia.

Example sentences

  1. Historians still disagree about the main causes of the war.

  2. As an economic historian, he works mainly with tax registers and price lists.

Common collocations

  • military historian
  • art historian
  • economic historian
  • historians argue
  • a leading historian
  • historyThe study of past events, especially those of human societies, and the written account that historians produce from the evidence they find.
  • historiographyThe writing of history, and especially the study of how historians have written about a subject over time, which sources they used and how their views changed.
  • 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.
  • evidenceInformation from sources, objects or data that helps show whether a claim about the past is true, or how likely it is.

More terms: Historiography and Historical Thinking

Practise with graded reading

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