histories

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of history.

   Doctors review patients' medical histories before prescribing anything new.

   The two nations have long and tangled histories of conflict and trade.

   Note

   Only the countable meanings of history pluralize comfortably. The past in general and the discipline that studies it usually stay singular, while the plural picks out separate records or sequences of events: medical histories, family histories, the histories of two nations. A doctor takes a patient's history and reviews several patients' histories, because each person's record of conditions counts as one.

2. 2
   verbobsolete

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of history. Obsolete.

   Note

   A verb form that survives mostly as a curiosity. History as a verb, meaning to narrate or record, is obsolete, so a sentence like "she histories the campaign" will strike most readers as a slip for the plural noun, which has the same spelling. In modern prose, records or narrates does the same work without the stumble.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2