If you would like to avoid being corrected, however, use historical for matters relating to history (the historical society), and historic to refer to things having great and lasting importance (a historic …

Historic means ‘important or likely to be important in history’: … It is also the case that historic preservation virtually never operates this way either. He also undertakes an innovative survey of …

HISTORIC definition: well-known or important in history. See examples of historic used in a sentence.

Something that is historic is important in history, or likely to be considered important at some time in the future. King gave this historic speech the night before he was assassinated. ...a fourth historic …

Historic refers to that which is associated with significant events in history: the historic first voyage to the moon. Thus, a historic house is likely to be of interest not just because it is relatively old, but because …

Definition of historic adjective in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.

History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and …

Oct 23, 2025 · In present usage, however, a distinction is often made between the two: historic is used as an adjective for the study of history, while historical is used as an adjective for the events of the past.

There are six meanings listed in OED's entry for the word historic, one of which is labelled obsolete. See ‘Meaning & use’ for definitions, usage, and quotation evidence.

Historic and historical are easy to confuse. Historic means 'having importance in history.' Historical means 'from the past' or 'relating to history.'