unhistory

Noun

unhistory (countable and uncountable, plural unhistories)

1. The stories of ordinary people who are not considered historical.
   • The mill-house, like the family of the miller, is for Hardy a representative part of the unhistory of the country, what we now know as local history, and which many consider to be the only sure basis of any historical knowledge;1986, Norman Page, Thomas Hardy Annual - Issue 4, page 72
   • Hagen and Zelman note that "what we lost" is also the "unwritten sufferings of ordinary women, ordinary people" who "are doomed to become unhistory" (445).1996, Colby Quarterly - Volumes 32-33, page 136
2. The suppressed history of controversial events.
   • Somehow, in this eerie age of unhistory, the whole meaning and purpose of life has been twisted around, warped and distorted.1971, Mortimer Lipsky, Never Again War: The Case for World Government, page 168
   • Kutler says, "Nixon would have us make unhistory out of a sequence of events for which we have ample evidence.1990, Newsweek - Volume 115, page 28
3. Inaccurate representations of the past that are presented as history.
   • The history, or rather the unhistory, of Stonehenge, is, paradoxical though it seems, a long and old story.1895, Abraham Van Doren Honeyman, Coaching in Merrie England
   • However, they encounter a serious problem: the actor begins to alter the dates of verifiable historical events, moving the Tunguska explosion from 1888 to 1908. We are told that, from this point on, 'the film project foundered further into a chaos of unhistory' (1983, 56).1995, Mark Currie, Metafiction, page 77