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:
The disrupted chronology, intended to provoke, may make the show harder for some visitors to digest.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026
Break down the chronology of your and Christian’s relationship.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 11, 2026
Kennedy said aspects of Öpik's life before Armagh had been blurry, and her research helped establish firmer dates and a clearer chronology.
From BBC ● Apr. 20, 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
“Salesman” is more limber in its dramaturgy, shifting locations and blurring chronologies.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 1, 2026
Using tree-ring chronologies allows researchers to look much further back in time without the uncertainty associated with some early instrumental measurements.
From Science Daily ● May 14, 2024
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
We now have dozens of chronologies of hurricane activity at different locations — including New England, the Florida Gulf Coast, the Florida Keys and Belize — that reveal decade- to century-scale patterns in hurricane frequency.
From Salon ● Nov. 30, 2022
We generated background studies, psychological assessments, daily chronologies, myriad facts and extrapolations.
From "Native Speaker" by Chang-rae Lee
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.
