HISTORIAN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does historian mean? 

• HISTORIAN (noun)
  The noun HISTORIAN has 1 sense:

1. a person who is an authority on history and who studies it and writes about it

  Familiarity information: HISTORIAN used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HISTORIAN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person who is an authority on history and who studies it and writes about it

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

historian; historiographer

Hypernyms ("historian" is a kind of...):

bookman; scholar; scholarly person; student (a learned person (especially in the humanities); someone who by long study has gained mastery in one or more disciplines)

Domain category:

history (the discipline that records and interprets past events involving human beings)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "historian"):

art historian (a historian of art)

chronicler (someone who writes chronicles)

annalist (a historian who writes annals)

Instance hyponyms:

C. Northcote Parkinson; Cyril Northcote Parkinson; Parkinson (British historian noted for ridicule of bureaucracies (1909-1993))

Xenophon (Greek general and historian; student of Socrates (430-355 BC))

James Harvey Robinson; Robinson (United States historian who stressed the importance of intellectual and social events for the course of history (1863-1936))

Saxo Grammaticus (Danish historian who chronicled the history of Denmark (including the legend of Hamlet) (1150?-1220?))

Arthur Meier Schlesinger; Arthur Schlesinger; Schlesinger (United States historian (1888-1965))

Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr.; Arthur Schlesinger; Arthur Schlesinger Jr.; Schlesinger (United States historian and advisor to President Kennedy (born in 1917))

Stubbs; William Stubbs (English historian noted for his constitutional history of medieval England (1825-1901))

Gaius Cornelius Tacitus; Publius Cornelius Tacitus; Tacitus (Roman historian who wrote major works on the history of the Roman Empire (56-120))

Thucydides (ancient Greek historian remembered for his history of the Peloponnesian War (460-395 BC))

Arnold Joseph Toynbee; Arnold Toynbee; Toynbee (English historian who studied the rise and fall of civilizations looking for cyclical patterns (1889-1975))

George Otto Trevelyan; Sir George Otto Trevelyan; Trevelyan (English historian who wrote a history of the American revolution and a biography of his uncle Lord Macaulay (1838-1928))

George Macaulay Trevelyan; Trevelyan (English historian and son of Sir George Otto Trevelyan whose works include a social history of England and a biography of Garibaldi (1876-1962))

Barbara Tuchman; Barbara Wertheim Tuchman; Tuchman (United States historian (1912-1989))

Frederick Jackson Turner; Turner (United States historian who stressed the role of the western frontier in American history (1861-1951))

Sir Paul Gavrilovich Vinogradoff; Vinogradoff (British historian (born in Russia) (1854-1925))

Fourth Earl of Orford; Horace Walpole; Horatio Walpole; Walpole (English writer and historian; son of Sir Robert Walpole (1717-1797))

Elie Wiesel; Eliezer Wiesel; Wiesel (United States writer (born in Romania) who survived Nazi concentration camps and is dedicated to keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust (born in 1928))

C. Vann Woodward; Comer Vann Woodward; Woodward (United States historian (1908-1999))

Herodotus (the ancient Greek known as the father of history; his accounts of the wars between the Greeks and Persians are the first known examples of historical writing (485-425 BC))

Arendt; Hannah Arendt (United States historian and political philosopher (born in Germany) (1906-1975))

Baeda; Beda; Bede; Saint Baeda; Saint Beda; Saint Bede; St. Baeda; St. Beda; St. Bede; the Venerable Bede ((Roman Catholic Church) English monk and scholar (672-735))

Carlyle; Thomas Carlyle (Scottish historian who wrote about the French Revolution (1795-1881))

Durant; Will Durant; William James Durant (United States historian (1885-1981))

Eusebius; Eusebius of Caesarea (Christian bishop of Caesarea in Palestine; a church historian and a leading early Christian exegete (circa 270-340))

Franklin; John Hope Franklin (United States historian noted for studies of Black American history (born in 1915))

Gardiner; Samuel Rawson Gardiner (British historian remembered for his ten-volume history of England (1829-1902))

Edward Gibbon; Gibbon (English historian best known for his history of the Roman Empire (1737-1794))

Barthold George Niebuhr; Niebuhr (German historian noted for his critical approach to sources and for his history of Rome (1776-1831))

Flavius Josephus; Joseph ben Matthias; Josephus (Jewish general who led the revolt of the Jews against the Romans and then wrote a history of those events (37-100))

John Knox; Knox (Scottish theologian who founded Presbyterianism in Scotland and wrote a history of the Reformation in Scotland (1514-1572))

Livy; Titus Livius (Roman historian whose history of Rome filled 142 volumes (of which only 35 survive) including the earliest history of the war with Hannibal (59 BC to AD 17))

First Baron Macaulay; Lord Macaulay; Macaulay; Thomas Babington Macaulay (English historian noted for his history of England (1800-1859))

Alfred Thayer Mahan; Mahan (United States naval officer and historian (1840-1914))

Frederic William Maitland; Maitland (English historian noted for his works on the history of English law (1850-1906))

John Bach McMaster; McMaster (United States historian who wrote a nine volume history of the people of the United States (1852-1932))

Mommsen; Theodor Mommsen (German historian noted for his history of Rome (1817-1903))

 Context examples 

So says my historian, at least.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Historians, you think, said Miss Tilney, are not happy in their flights of fancy.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

"It's notable because historians led this effort and asked historical questions that focused on the potential social and economic effects of plague."

(Justinianic plague not a landmark pandemic?, National Science Foundation)

Perhaps I shall get the credit also at some distant day, when I permit my zealous historian to lay out his foolscap once more—eh, Watson?

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I cannot feel that I have done my duty as humble historian of the March family, without devoting at least one chapter to the two most precious and important members of it.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

If you are an architect, historian, a dealer in rare letters and autographs, a museum curator, or archeologist, this month will find you winning your glory and making exceptional progress.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

I cannot think how the historian of the future can hope to understand them, when I, who knew one of them so well, and bore his blood in my veins, could never quite tell how much of him was real, and how much was due to the affectations which he had cultivated so long that they had ceased to deserve the name.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A team of scientists and medieval historians, led by the University of Cambridge, has used information contained within ice cores and tree rings to accurately date a massive volcanic eruption, which took place soon after the island was first settled.

(Volcanic eruption influenced Iceland’s conversion to Christianity, University of Cambridge)

The small matter which I have chronicled under the heading of A Study in Scarlet, and that other later one connected with the loss of the Gloria Scott, may serve as examples of this Scylla and Charybdis which are forever threatening the historian.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

For I have always borne that laudable partiality to my own country, which Dionysius Halicarnassensis, with so much justice, recommends to an historian: I would hide the frailties and deformities of my political mother, and place her virtues and beauties in the most advantageous light.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)