make history
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Achieve something great or unprecedented
Literally: create historical events
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
' ' Men make their own history, ' to quote the master, ' but they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.
Zola … about to make history or just history?
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “make history” mean?
Achieve something great or unprecedented Literally: create historical events
Is “make history” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.