historian
Pluralhistorians
- 1A person who studies or researches the events and people of the past.
The historian examined court records to reconstruct daily life in the medieval town.
Historians still debate the real causes of the empire's collapse.
Note
The working scholar's sense, where the weight falls on investigation rather than on the finished book. The two meanings still pull on each other. Jonathan Gorman, in Understanding history (1992), considers whether historians should represent their subjects' lives "in storylike form": the researcher weighing a return to the narrative craft of the writer of history.
- 2A person who writes accounts or narratives of past events.
The historian devoted a decade to writing a definitive account of the revolution.
Ancient historians like Thucydides shaped how later generations understood war.
Similarchronicler, historiographer
Note
Here the historian is a teller. The word came through Old French historien from Latin historia, which meant "story" as well as "history", so this sense keeps the narrative at its center. What defines the historian here is the account a reader can hold, not the archive work behind it, which is what the researcher's sense stresses.
- 3A patient who gives an account of their own medical background, symptoms, and past illnesses.
The nurse noted that the elderly man was a reliable historian regarding his past surgeries.
Confused patients can be unreliable historians, so doctors often consult family members.
Note
A clinician's term, and a judgment on the patient rather than a title. It typically comes with an adjective of reliability: a good, reliable or poor historian. Dains, Baumann and Scheibel (2007) call a patient who was unconscious during a fainting episode a poor historian, because they could not observe what happened to them. The scholar's word here means only the person whose account the medical history rests on.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English "historian," borrowed from Old French "historien," which came from Latin "historia" ("story, history"); it corresponds to "history" plus the suffix "-ian."