allohistory

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UK/alə(ʊ)ˈhɪst(ə)ɹi/UK/alə(ʊ)ˈhɪst(ə)ɹɪ/US/æləˈhɪst(ə)ɹi/US/æloʊˈhɪst(ə)ɹi/

noun

Synonym of alternate history.

Scrabble 17

Meanings

nounallohistory (usually uncountable, plural allohistories)

plural allohistories

  1. uncountableusuallySynonym of alternate history.

    I define alloliterature as the alteration of known literary texts to present an alternate outcome from the original text. As with allohistory, a large range of texts can be deemed alloliterary in nature, with the three primary types of alloliterature aligning with the three types of allohistory:[…]

    2018 January 19, Brett Carol Young, “"The great change in human history": The Recasting of the Fall of Man as the Crisis of Faith in His Dark Materials”, in Sara K. Day, Sonya Sawyer Fritz, editors, The Victorian Period in Twenty-First Century Children’s and Adolescent Literature and Culture, Routledge, →ISBN, page 36
    2 more examples

    But some discussion of the complex relationship between “allohistory” and sf is appropriate here, as the genres overlap in certain ways. Classical allohistory— such as Trevelyan's "What if Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo?" and Churchill's "If Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg" —is a rigorously consistent thought-experiment in historical causality.

    2011 February 1, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction, Wesleyan University Press, →ISBN, pages 102–103

    […]the early twenty-second century in a timeline where the atomic bomb that instilled such dread in Royland never materialized, resulting in an Axis victory. Over fifty years old now, "Two Dooms" predated Philip K. Dick's more famous World War II allohistory, The Man in the High Castle by three years.

    2015 July 19, Nader Elhefnawy, After the New Wave: Science Fiction Today, pages 46–47

    Synonyms: alternate history, alternate history, alternative history

Synonyms & antonyms

nounSynonym of alternate history.

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

allohistory. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/allohistory

MLA

“allohistory.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/allohistory. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “allohistory,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/allohistory.

Source: allohistory on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.