adjective
- of, pertaining to, treating, or characteristic of history or past events: historical records; historical research.
- based on or reconstructed from an event, custom, style, etc., in the past: a historical reenactment of the battle of Gettysburg.
- having once existed or lived in the real world, as opposed to being part of legend or fiction or as distinguished from religious belief: to doubt that a historical Camelot ever existed; a theologian’s study of the historical Jesus.
- narrated or mentioned in history; belonging to the past.
- noting or pertaining to analysis based on a comparison among several periods of development of a phenomenon, as in language or economics.
- historic(def 1).
adjective
- belonging to or typical of the study of historyhistorical methods
- concerned with or treating of events of the pasthistorical accounts
- based on or constituting factual material as distinct from legend or supposition
- based on or inspired by historya historical novel
- occurring or prominent in history
- a less common word for historic (def. 1)
early 15c. (earlier in same sense was historial, late 14c.), from Latin historicus (from Greek historikos “historical, of or for inquiry,” from historia; see history) + -al (1). Related: Historically.