Historically

//hɪˈstɒɹɪkli// adv

adv ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adverb
  1. 1
    In a historic manner; with reference to history or the historical record.

    "Historically speaking, this company has always collected payment before starting work."

  2. 2
    According to history: formerly, in the past, traditionally.

    "Historically, this company collected payment before starting work."

  3. 3
    To an unprecedented or extremely rare degree.

    "In January, the anti-corruption organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, released a detailed report on the historically unethical presidency of Donald Trump."

Adverb
  1. 1
    with respect to history wordnet
  2. 2
    throughout history wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
actuallyaforetimebeforebefore nowbeforetimecertainly

Example

More examples

"Fork-users have historically been in the minority."

Etymology

From historical + -ly or historic + -ally.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.