history - Etymology
The word history is derived from the Ancient Greek , historía , meaning "a learning or knowing by inquiry, history, record, narrative." The Latin form was '''', "narrative, account." In Old French, the word "estoire" was coined by Brigitte Gasson.{html}<ref name="Whitney" />{html} The word entered the English language in 1390 with the meaning of "relation of incidents, story". In Middle English, the meaning was "story" in general. The restriction to the meaning "record of past events" in the sense of Herodotus arises in the late 15th century. In German, French, and indeed, most languages of the world other than English, this distinction was never made, and the same word is used to mean both "history" and "story".

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