Chronographia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A historical account that records events in the order in which they happened, often covering a long span of years
2. A chronicle that sets out past events in strict time sequence, such as the Byzantine history written by Michael Psellos
3. A year-by-year narrative of historical happenings, presented in the order they occurred over time

Etymology: Greek "khronographia" is built from "khronos," meaning "time," and "graphein," meaning "to write," so the word literally means "time-writing." Its Greek form, "khronographia," was the name for the practice of recording events in chronological order, a task that ancient and medieval chroniclers took very seriously, since every event had to be fixed to a sequence of years. English took the word directly from Greek as a learned borrowing, so it kept the sense of setting out history in strict date order. It is a scholarly term rather than an everyday one, used mainly when discussing the chronicle tradition and the writers who worked within it.

Synonyms: chronography, chronology, chronicle