I must admit I've contemplated posting this for several month. Yes I'm an old f**t. So perhaps that's an operative factor here. Regardless this situation is driving me nuts.

My aging memory tells me that of late folks are using the term historical where in the past historic was used.

Now I ask you... am I nuts or has this transition taken place?

Not all that is historical is historic.

The words do not mean the same thing.

Historic means that it is an important event, or potentially so. It does not mean that it has happened in the past. Some historic events are going to happen in the future. For instance, if they were going to fire up the first working fusion power plant next week, I could tell you today that it's going to be a historic event. It's going to make history, even if that history is in the future.

Historical simply means happening in the past. Does not even need to be important at all. For instance, a historical fiction simply means that it's a fiction that takes place in the past.

Pay attention to how people are using the words--they are not interchangeable, so it's not just a shift where one is being used more than the other.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
The words do not mean the same thing.

Pay attention to how people are using the words--they are not interchangeable, so it's not just a shift where one is being used more than the other.

Oh I have and I believe folks are misusing the terms swinging to historical over historic. An example was a recent broadcast marking the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack in which the announcer used the term historical.

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:
An example was a recent broadcast marking the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack in which the announcer used the term historical.

Depending on the sentence structure used, it could have been used correctly. It occurred in the past, wouldn't that make it an historical event

quote:

Originally posted by 9mmepiphany:

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:
An example was a recent broadcast marking the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack in which the announcer used the term historical.

Depending on the sentence structure used, it could have been used correctly. It occurred in the past, wouldn't that make it an historical event

Also (rightly or wrongly) there is a common inference that an historic event is a positive event. For example, the election of Donald Trump was historic, while the election of obama was tragic. I would be uncomfortable describing either the attack on Pearl Harbor or 9-11 as historic.