alternative history
UK/ˈɔːltɜːnətɪv ˌhɪstɹi/US/ˈɔltɚnətɪv ˌhɪstɹi/
alternative history noun: counterfactual history, a form of scientific speculation used by historians.
Noun
alternative history (usually uncountable, plural alternative histories)
- Counterfactual history, a form of scientific speculation used by historians.
- One of the many criticisms that can be directed at alternative historians is their failure to think historically. For alternative history, the past is not a ‘foreign country’, but rather a country that closely resembles the Russian Empire of recent times.2014 May, Konstantin Sheiko, Stephen Brown, History as Therapy: Alternative History and Nationalist Imaginings in Russia
- Synonyms:
- alternate history, allohistory
- A genre of fiction based around or involving ahistorical events (often occurring after a fixed point of divergence from real history).
Synonyms of alternative history
Forms of alternative history
| plural | alternative histories |
|---|
Questions about alternative history
- What does alternative history mean?
- Alternative history means counterfactual history, a form of scientific speculation used by historians.
- What part of speech is alternative history?
- Alternative history is a noun.
- How do you pronounce alternative history?
- Alternative history is pronounced /ˈɔːltɜːnətɪv ˌhɪstɹi/ (UK).
- What is the plural of alternative history?
- The plural of alternative history is alternative histories.
Words near alternative history in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: alternative history (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “alternative history.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/alternative_history. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.