Historic vs Historical
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Historic or Historical
While it is common to get confused between homophones in English language, there are times when users get confused even when the words are not homophones, an example being that of the two words ‘historic’ and ‘historical’.
What aggravates the confusion even more is the fact that both words belong to the same part of speech, meaning both are adjectives. However, this is where the similarity between them ends apart from the fact that both belong in the past.
Historic
‘Historic’ means something significant, seminal or momentous and hence should be used to refer to events or objects that were important enough to change the course of history. For example, the formation of United Nations in 1945 was a historic event because it marked the first time when nations around the world shared a common platform for resolving all kinds of crisis. Likewise, treaties, battlefields and monuments are all historic because they have played an instrumental role in shaping history and determining as we know it today.
Historical
‘Historical’, also an adjective, means anything that belongs in the past or is related to the past in a general way. Such happenings, objects or references do not hold any importance and the only qualification they possess for being historical is belonging in the past. Therefore, a romantic story, an artifact or a book is historical in nature since it is from the era gone by. Had it been important, then it would have been labeled as ‘historic’.
Which form to use?
Suppose you have been given an event and asked to label it as ‘historic’ or ‘historical’, which would you choose? First and foremost, you will need to determine whether it holds any significance and if it does then it would be ‘historic’. If it is just a run-of-the-mill event, then ‘historical’ would be the right word to use.
Therefore, all historic events are historical but all historical events are definitely not historic. In other words, anything that happened in the past is historical but it is only the most seminal events that could be labeled as being historic.
Another way of distinguishing between them entails matching ‘ic’ of ‘historic’ with important and ‘al’ of ‘historical’ with ‘all that is in the past’.