Question:

I am not sure about the difference between 'historical' and 'historic'. Could you please tell me how to use the two words correctly? Thank you. (Way)

Way 想知道 historic 和 historical 这两个词的区别。这两个词都是形容词，而且都有“历史的”意思，那区别到底是什么呢？

Answer:

Well, historical is a very general word. Any single thing, or group of things, that are related to history, can be described as historical. Here are two people talking about their travel plans.

Examples:

We’ll spend the afternoon visiting the historical buildings in the old town. Then we’ll have lunch.

How long does it take to get there?

Nearly 4 hours. Don’t forget to bring something to read.

I will – I’ve got a couple of historical novels I want to finish.

Oh, historical fiction? I like that too.

上面的例子里单词 historical 指的是和历史有关的或是历史上出现过的人或事。比如说，历史建筑 historical buildings，历史小说 historical fiction。 好，我们再来看一下单词 historic。

So while historical is used very generally, the word historic has a very specific sense. We say something is historic when we want to emphasise that it is very special, important, unique or unforgettable in our history.

单词 historic 常用来表示历史上一件难忘的、有名的、重要的、独特的东西。那重大事件呢？

Both! We can talk about historic days, historic meetings, historic places, historic moments. Here’s a tour guide to give us some examples.

Example:

And here are the steps from which the president made his historic announcement. And at the top of the steps, the historic silver gate is over 400 years old. It’s the only one of its kind that survives today.

上面例子中提到了一个历史性的公告 a historic announcement， 还有发表这个公告的地点一扇历史性的银门 a historic silver gate。 好了，我们来总结一下这两个单词的使用方法：在使用这两个词的时候，记住： historical 来描述一般的历史事件或与历史有关的东西；用 historic 来形容一个具体的历史事件。

Yes. Historical is general, historic is specific. Or you can look at it this way: if something is historical, it happened in the past. If something is historic, it happened in the past and it’s very important.

区分这两个词的最好方法就是记住 historical 描述过去发生的一件事情；用historic 描述过去发生的、并且非常重要的事件。