بوابة الثانوية العامة المصرية - نفسى حد يجيبلى المفيد

What's the difference between "historic" and "historical"?

In one sense these words are distinguished from each other, but in another sense they overlap

Historic, according to The Cambridge Guide to English Usage p. 250)

is more self-consciously associated with the making of history, so that a historic event is one which people feel is particularly significant in the life and culture of the nation. Historical is more neutral, acknowledging that something belongs to the past, or to the study of the past, or else that it really happened and is not fictitious.

According to this usage, a historical book is a book about history, but a historic book is one that is particularly significant in the culture, perhaps because it was the first of its kind — the first novel, the first book printed rather than copied by hand, the first book to deal with a certain subject, etc

A historical person is one who really existed in the past. Legends are usually fantastic imaginary stories that grow around a historical figure. That is, the person really existed, even though the deeds and events of the legend are imaginary or exaggerated

Similarly, a historical event is one that actually happened, though it may not be significant. A historic event, on the other hand, is one that is significant

According to The Cambridge Guide, a historical building is simply an old building. A historic building is considered important because a memorable event happened in or near it — an assassination, the signing of a treaty, the founding of an important organization, etc.

However, references disagree on whether historic can mean "very old". The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary give one meaning of historic as "very old" or "dating from or preserved from a past time or culture." This meaning is also common on the Internet.

Therefore, when we talk about the buildings of Egypt's ancient or medieval past, both historic and historical are correct to mean "very old" and students should not be asked to choose between the words.

But when we talk about a significant building or structure — such as the world's first iron bridge mentioned in Sec 3 Unit 7 — historic is the correct word because we are referring to what made that structure important: its being the first of its kind, its being the largest of its kind, etc. It might not be very old, but it is historic in the sense of being culturally important.