meta-historyn.
/ˌmɛtəˈhɪst(ə)ri/, U.S. /ˈˌmɛdəˈˌhɪst(ə)ri/ΘΚΠ
the world > time > relative time > the past > history or knowledge about the past > [noun] > branches or types of history
ancient history1566
church story1581
archaeology1607
church history1609
local history1615
mythistory1731
human story1753
intellectual history1755
oral history1827
Assyriology1828
world history1833
hierologya1848
meta-history1854
Hibernologya1869
prehistory1871
proto-history1876
prehistorics1879
earth history1880
Sumerology1897
historiometry1909
black history1920
herstory1932
ethnohistory1938
meta-history1946
Annales1952
Hittitology1952
revisionism1965
longue durée1968
Warburgianism1977
1854 G. R. Gliddon in J. C. Nott & G. R. Gliddon Types of Mankind iii. ii. 641 Their first Emperor Fo-hi (whose name emblematizes to the Chinese mind above 1000 years of meta-history).
2. Enquiry into the principles governing historical events; the study of the philosophy of history, or of historiography; spec. the study of the structure of historical narrative. Also: the propounding of universal explanations of historical processes.
ΘΚΠ
the world > time > relative time > the past > history or knowledge about the past > [noun] > branches or types of history
ancient history1566
church story1581
archaeology1607
church history1609
local history1615
mythistory1731
human story1753
intellectual history1755
oral history1827
Assyriology1828
world history1833
hierologya1848
meta-history1854
Hibernologya1869
prehistory1871
proto-history1876
prehistorics1879
earth history1880
Sumerology1897
historiometry1909
black history1920
herstory1932
ethnohistory1938
meta-history1946
Annales1952
Hittitology1952
revisionism1965
longue durée1968
Warburgianism1977
1946 Philos. & Phenomenol. Res. 7 166 (note) Heidegger's lectures of Aristotle were full of mental reservations—expressions of the contrast between Greek meta-physics and modern ‘meta-history’.
1955 Philos. & Phenomenol. Res. 15 477 Meta-history for us today has a two-fold problematic situation within which to operate: (1) the epistemological problem, with its accompanying subsidiary ontological problem as to the status of historical events, and (2) the significance problem.
a1963 C. S. Lewis Discarded Image (1964) viii. 175 What Virgil puts forward in a mythical form is precisely meta-history.
1978 Dædalus Fall 121 When all the others defined their predicament through the distinction between ‘historical’ and ‘modern’, Freud dissolved the whole cultural sphere into metahistory.
1986 Year's Work Eng. Stud. 1983 381 Pykett suggests..that such metahistory may not be entirely incompatible with Eliot's earlier Comtean views.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2001; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1854