History vs Story
History and Story are two words that are often confused when it comes to their meanings and connotations. Strictly speaking, they are different words with different usages. The word ‘history’ refers to the events of the ‘past’. On the other hand, the word ‘story’ refers to ‘fiction’. This is the main difference between the two words.
It is believed by the philologists that the word ‘story’ would have formed from the word ‘history’ by means of the phonetic change called ‘aphaeresis’. According to aphaeresis, some words tend to lose the initial vowel sound due to phonetic change. In the example of history, the initial vowel sound ‘I’ in ‘history’ is lost and hence it got converted to ‘story’.
As a matter of fact the word ‘story’ is indicative of any narration based on imagination or fiction. The writer of stories is often called by the name ‘story writer’. A story centers on a certain event in one’s life or any incident pertaining to his or her life. It gives a unique message at the end. A story is very short when compared to a novel.
On the other hand, history deals with the events of the past that had taken place in a country or a society. Political events, social events and other types of events come under history. History is important in the sense it helps us to understand a particular country better.
It is interesting to note that the word ‘history’ is used as a noun, and it has its adjectival form in the word ‘historical’ as in the expression ‘historical events’. On the other hand, the word ‘story’ is often used as a noun only. Expressions such as ‘storyline’, ‘crime story’ have been formed from the word ‘story’. These are the differences between the words, history and story.
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