Dictionary

microhistory en · NOUN

Etymology

From micro- + history.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) The study of the past on a small scale, such as an individual neighborhood or town, as a case study for general trends.
   • What is certain is that in “The Pattern in the Carpet,” Drabble eschews both chronology and raw autobiographical revelation for a more meandering approach that touches briefly on family pathology and private pain as it crisscrosses the centuries and unfolds the microhistory of jigsaw puzzles, an English invention, circa 1767. 2009 September 13, Daphne Merkin, “Dame of the British Interior”, in New York Times:
   • The most celebrated works of microhistory are Carlo Ginzberg's The Cheese and the Worms, a difficult but very rewarding, if contentious, exploration of popular belief and the impact of literacy in sixteenth-century Italy[…] 2003, The New Zealand Journal of History, University of Auckland, page 45:

Forms

Antonyms

macrohistory

Deriveds

microhistorical · microhistorically · microhistorian

Translations (7)

ca microhistòria (study of the past on a small scale) · el μικροϊστορία (study of the past on a small scale) · it microstoria (study of the past on a small scale) · pt micro-história (study of the past on a small scale) · fr microhistoire (study of the past on a small scale) · de Mikrogeschichte (study of the past on a small scale) · es microhistoria (study of the past on a small scale)