the present tense used to narrate past events, usually employed in English for special effect or in informal use, as in a week ago I'm walking down the street and I see this accident
Examples of 'historic present' in a sentence
historic present
Is it any wonder that he favours the historic present?
Times, Sunday Times (2014)
Nobody writes in the historic present any more.
Times, Sunday Times (2018)
The second part is written in the third person, sometimes using the historic present.
The Times Literary Supplement (2014)
The use of the historic present jars.
Times, Sunday Times (2014)
The tenses shift from historic present to imperative and future.
Times, Sunday Times (2013)
The use of the historic present has a good and ancient pedigree but unless used sparingly to create effect, it stales.
Times, Sunday Times (2014)
The tenses vary, sometimes reassuring us with the safe feeling of a mythical past, sometimes threatening us with the precariousness of an urgent historic present.
Times, Sunday Times (2008)
Similarly, historians pretend to a false familiarity with their subjects by using the historic present.