Word.ws English Dictionary

herstory

UK/ˈhɜːst(ə)ɹi//ˈhɝst(ə)ɹi/

herstory noun: history that emphasizes the role of women, or that is told from a woman's (or from a feminist) point of view.

Noun

herstory (countable and uncountable, plural herstories)

  1. (slang) History that emphasizes the role of women, or that is told from a woman's (or from a feminist) point of view.
    • "Mama's Lullaby" shared the growth of McCord's appreciation for her mother and a prayer that her infant son might someday "sing this motther song with me"; a blending of the strong herstory of women's survival with the hope that men of the future will learn to praise their own capacity for...1984 April 21, Pam Gordon, “'There's Always Cost': Ferron's Boston Concert”, in Gay Community News, page 17
    • For Dita Garbo, it’s an “honour” to make herstory as Drag Race UK’s oldest-ever queen. “The younger bitches need to be careful ‘cause we’ve got wisdom – and we’ve still got time!” (Kandy Ho is trembling.)2024 September 12, Sam Damshenas, “‘A new direction for the franchise’: Drag Race UK stars on “mind-blowing” season 6”, in Gay Times
  2. Any historical writing by or about women.
  3. Biographical material about a woman.
    • Nobody thought of it as history, herstory, my-story, your-story, or our-story.1989, “Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, "1969 Mother Stonewall and the Golden Rats"”, in The Stonewall Reader, Penguin Classics, published 2019, →ISBN, page 107

Forms of herstory

pluralherstories

Origin of herstory

Wordplay: blend of her + history, derived as though the first syllable in history were his, the male determiner.

Words formed from herstory

Questions about herstory

What does herstory mean?
Herstory means history that emphasizes the role of women, or that is told from a woman's (or from a feminist) point of view.
What part of speech is herstory?
Herstory is a noun.
How do you pronounce herstory?
Herstory is pronounced /ˈhɜːst(ə)ɹi/ (UK).
What is the plural of herstory?
The plural of herstory is herstories.

Words near herstory in the dictionary

  1. herstorians
  2. herstoric
  3. herstorical
  4. herstorically
  5. herstories
  6. herstory
  7. herstrionics
  8. Hert
  9. Herta
  10. Hertel
  11. Hertels

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: herstory (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-herstory.wav.

Cite this entry: “herstory.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/herstory. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.