chronology
Americannoun
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chronologies
plural
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the sequential order in which past events occur.
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a statement of this order.
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the science of arranging time in periods and ascertaining the dates and historical order of past events.
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a reference work organized according to the dates of events.
noun
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the determination of the proper sequence of past events
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the arrangement of dates, events, etc, in order of occurrence
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a table or list of events arranged in order of occurrence
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of chronology
Explanation
A chronology is like a timeline: it tells what happened when. A chronology of your day would begin when you wake up and end when you go to sleep. Hopefully, something interesting happened in between. Khronos is the Greek word for "time" and that's where chronology comes from. If a movie has a lot of flashbacks or doesn't tell a story straight through from beginning to end, you might have to give it some thought in order to put together a chronology of events. If you are a detective, a correct chronology could be important to solving your case.
Vocabulary lists containing chronology
Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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It's About Time: Chron and Temp
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Did You Planet? Words With Surprisingly Spacey Origins
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Rhys: No, because I think the chronology is laid out beautifully throughout the series and you’re kind of led in a way where it unfolds very organically.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026
The disrupted chronology, intended to provoke, may make the show harder for some visitors to digest.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026
In the chronology of fouls, this was the first potential incident.
From BBC ● May 11, 2026
The "long chronology" proposes that humans arrived around 60,000 years ago.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 9, 2026
With this chronology in mind, we can now address an important question: was Copernicus’s adoption of the terraqueous-globe theory the key event which led to his switch from geocentrism to heliocentrism?
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
"Our study is a reminder that the oldest chronologies must be treated with great caution," explains Sahra Talamo, professor at the University of Bologna and co-coordinator of the study.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 22, 2026
“Salesman” is more limber in its dramaturgy, shifting locations and blurring chronologies.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 1, 2026
In the wake of their headline-grabbing Vinland success, the Groningen team is tackling another alluring set of historical puzzles: “floating” chronologies, or ancient, internally consistent timelines that are untethered to specific dates.
From Science Magazine ● Apr. 13, 2023
Mokri’s prior features, “Fish & Cat” and “Invasion,” have ouroboros-style plots, with recursive chronologies and scenes repeated from various characters’ points of view.
From New York Times ● Feb. 24, 2022
The major intellectual pursuit of his last years was a concordance and calibration of the chronologies of ancient civilizations, very much in the tradition of the ancient historians Manetho, Strabo and Eratosthenes.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
