historiography

[ hi-stawr-ee-og-ruh-fee, -stohr- ]

noun

, plural his·to·ri·og·ra·phies.

1. the body of literature dealing with historical matters; histories collectively.
2. the body of techniques, theories, and principles of historical research and presentation; methods of historical scholarship.
3. the narrative presentation of history based on a critical examination, evaluation, and selection of material from primary and secondary sources and subject to scholarly criteria.
4. an official history:

   medieval historiographies.

Other Words From

• his·to·ri·o·graph·ic [hi-stawr-ee-, uh, -, graf, -ik, -stohr-], his·tori·o·graphi·cal adjective
• his·tori·o·graphi·cal·ly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of historiography¹

1560–70; < Middle French historiographie < Greek historiographía. See history, -o-, -graphy

Example Sentences

The work of historiography is to locate events in time, in all their contingent specificity.

From Time

It was this sense of ethnic superiority that allowed a spurious historiography whereby America was discovered by Vikings.

From Time

Official historiography places the origins of Belarus in Soviet ideology.

From The Daily Beast

Some nations have mythology that is more historically accurate than Russian official historiography.

From The Daily Beast

They may well, in fact, be the most discussed questions in 20th century historiography.

From The Daily Beast

I am only very slightly kidding here: this is precisely the stuff of scholarly historiography, as it should be.

From The Daily Beast

But Arafat's take on history, his lies, in effect, fly in the face of 1,400 years of Muslim tradition and historiography.

From The Daily Beast

Moreover the traditions of pragmatical historiography had by no means disappeared.

From Project Gutenberg

But historiography cannot permanently evade the questions raised by these theories.

From Project Gutenberg

His output is perhaps the greatest of any isolated worker in the whole history of historiography.

From Project Gutenberg

For the rest we have in our hands a product of the oldest Hebrew historiography.

From Project Gutenberg

All this time, there are no Albanians in the historiography of this cursed land.

From Project Gutenberg