From WordNet (r) 2.0 (August 2003) [wn]:
history
n 1: the aggregate of past events; "a critical time in the
school's history"
2: the continuum of events occurring in succession leading from
the past to the present and even into the future; "all of
human history"
3: a record or narrative description of past events; "a history
of France"; "he gave an inaccurate account of the plot to
kill the president"; "the story of exposure to lead" [syn:
account, chronicle, story]
4: the discipline that records and interprets past events
involving human beings; "he teaches Medieval history";
"history takes the long view"
5: all that is remembered of the past as preserved in writing;
a body of knowledge; "the dawn of recorded history"; "from
the beginning of history"
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
History \His"to*ry\, n.; pl. Histories. [L. historia, Gr.
'istori`a history, information, inquiry, fr. 'istwr, "istwr,
knowing, learned, from the root of ? to know; akin to E. wit.
See Wit, and cf. Story.]
[1913 Webster]
1. A learning or knowing by inquiry; the knowledge of facts
and events, so obtained; hence, a formal statement of such
information; a narrative; a description; a written record;
as, the history of a patient's case; the history of a
legislative bill.
[1913 Webster]
2. A systematic, written account of events, particularly of
those affecting a nation, institution, science, or art,
and usually connected with a philosophical explanation of
their causes; a true story, as distinguished from a
romance; -- distinguished also from annals, which relate
simply the facts and events of each year, in strict
chronological order; from biography, which is the record
of an individual's life; and from memoir, which is history
composed from personal experience, observation, and
memory.
[1913 Webster]
Histories are as perfect as the historian is wise,
and is gifted with an eye and a soul. --Carlyle.
[1913 Webster]
For aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history. --Shak.
[1913 Webster]
What histories of toil could I declare! --Pope.
[1913 Webster]
History piece, a representation in painting, drawing, etc.,
of any real event, including the actors and the action.
Natural history, a description and classification of
objects in nature, as minerals, plants, animals, etc., and
the phenomena which they exhibit to the senses.
Syn: Chronicle; annals; relation; narration.
Usage: History, Chronicle, Annals. History is a
methodical record of important events which concern a
community of men, usually so arranged as to show the
connection of causes and effects, to give an analysis
of motive and action etc. A chronicle is a record of
such events, conforming to the order of time as its
distinctive feature. Annals are a chronicle divided up
into separate years. By poetic license annals is
sometimes used for history.
[1913 Webster]
Justly C[ae]sar scorns the poet's lays;
It is to history he trusts for praise. --Pope.
[1913 Webster]
No more yet of this;
For 't is a chronicle of day by day,
Not a relation for a breakfast. --Shak.
[1913 Webster]
Many glorious examples in the annals of our
religion. --Rogers.
[1913 Webster]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
History \His"to*ry\, v. t.
To narrate or record. [Obs.] --Shak.
[1913 Webster]
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (19 Sep 2003) [foldoc]:
history
1. <operating system> A record of previous user inputs (e.g. to
a command interpreter) which can be re-entered without
re-typing them. The major improvement of the C shell (csh)
over the Bourne shell (sh) was the addition of a command
history. This was still inferior to the history mechanism on
VMS which allowed you to recall previous commands as the
current input line. You could then edit the command using
cursor motion, insert and delete. These sort of history
editing facilities are available under tcsh and GNU Emacs.
2. <history> {The history of computing
(http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/index.html)}.
3. See Usenet newsgroups news:soc.history and
news:alt.history for discussion of the history of the world.
(1995-04-05)