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History vocabulary · Historiography and Historical Thinking

Interpretation

Meaning in history, with examples

/ɪnˌtɜːprɪˈteɪʃn/nounCore term

In history, interpretation means: A 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.

In Turkish: yorum, yorumlama

How it is used

Historians offer, put forward, challenge and reject interpretations. Exam questions often ask students to compare interpretations or to assess how convincing one is. The verb is interpret: How should we interpret this letter?

Example sentences

  1. Her interpretation of the reforms stresses local pressures rather than European influence.

  2. Compare the two interpretations and explain which is better supported by the evidence.

Common collocations

  • a different interpretation
  • challenge an interpretation
  • competing interpretations
  • open to interpretation
  • the traditional interpretation
  • 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.
  • evidenceInformation from sources, objects or data that helps show whether a claim about the past is true, or how likely it is.
  • biasA one-sided view that makes a source or a writer favour one person, group or explanation, so that the account is not fully balanced or complete.
  • revisionismThe re-examination of accepted views of the past in the light of new evidence or questions; the word can also mean distorting well-established facts for political ends.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Historiography and Historical Thinking

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