Glossary
Historian Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential historian terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key historian vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in historian training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Archive
- Record collection.
- Citation
- Source reference.
- Exhibit
- Museum display.
- Finding aid
- Archive guide.
- Historic context
- Background for a site.
- Historiography
- Study of how history is written.
- Interpretation
- Explaining history.
- National Register
- List of historic places.
- Oral history
- Recorded interviews.
- Preservation
- Protecting historic resources.
- Primary source
- Document from the time.
- Provenance
- Ownership history.
- Public history
- History for the public.
- Secondary source
- Later analysis.
- Section 106
- Historic review law.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Historian practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Historian training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.