History Word Search Printable, from Pharaohs to the Space Age

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History Word Search

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0 of 16 words found

TYEOREVOLUTIOND

LIBRAMSAUOUYCMO

PAWMKNJOHRLEBUO

TTCENTURYPOCISE

TRORLXAEXPLORER

NELPIONEERDNTUA

UAONTRCLVKYSRMT

PTNBOTINVENTION

WYYNVKEELUAIHED

FHELIWNECASTLEU

COWDKLTULLTUJTB

MPKNIGHTCSYTOIE

KHDSNOPYRAMIDET

FJRSGLPHARAOHID

EAALLOOISRANKYF

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

CenturyCENTURY
MuseumMUSEUM
AncientANCIENT
PharaohPHARAOH
PyramidPYRAMID
DynastyDYNASTY
CastleCASTLE
KnightKNIGHT
VikingVIKING
ExplorerEXPLORER
ColonyCOLONY
PioneerPIONEER
RevolutionREVOLUTION
ConstitutionCONSTITUTION
InventionINVENTION
TreatyTREATY

16 of 24 words from the History Favorites list.

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Answer key: History Word Search

TYEOREVOLUTIOND

LIBRAMSAUOUYCMO

PAWMKNJOHRLEBUO

TTCENTURYPOCISE

TRORLXAEXPLORER

NELPIONEERDNTUA

UAONTRCLVKYSRMT

PTNBOTINVENTION

WYYNVKEELUAIHED

FHELIWNECASTLEU

COWDKLTULLTUJTB

MPKNIGHTCSYTOIE

KHDSNOPYRAMIDET

FJRSGLPHARAOHID

EAALLOOISRANKYF

CENTURY, MUSEUM, ANCIENT, PHARAOH, PYRAMID, DYNASTY, CASTLE, KNIGHT, VIKING, EXPLORER, COLONY, PIONEER, REVOLUTION, CONSTITUTION, INVENTION, TREATY

Next step Build a puzzle from your own unit's word list Scramble the same history words

All 208 words

History Detective 31

Age A named period of the past. Stone, Bronze and Iron make up the three-part system.
Ancestor A family member who lived long before you, further back than your grandparents.
Ancient Very old. For historians it covers roughly 3000 BC to AD 500.
Archaeology The study of the human past by digging up and examining what people left behind.
Archive A place where old letters, maps, photographs and records are kept safe.
Artifact An object made by people long ago, such as a tool, a coin or a clay pot.
Century A period of 100 years. The 20th one ran from 1 January 1901 to 31 December 2000.
Chronology The order in which events happened, from first to last.
Coin Metal money. The pictures and names stamped on old ones help date a site.
Date The day, month or year when something happened.
Decade A period of 10 years, such as the 1960s.
Diary A daily record of one person's life, written at the time.
Dig A site where archaeologists carefully remove soil to find buried objects.
Era A long stretch of time that historians give a name to.
Evidence Facts and objects that help show what really happened.

Show all 208 words (193 more)

History Detective, continued

Excavation Careful digging at a site where people once lived, one layer at a time.
Historian A person who studies and writes about the past.
Inscription Words carved into stone or metal. The Rosetta Stone carries one decree in three versions.
Manuscript A book or document written by hand.
Monument A statue or building put up so that a person or event is remembered.
Museum A building where objects from the past are kept and shown to visitors.
Parchment Writing material made from the prepared skins of sheep, calves and goats.
Past All the time that has already happened.
Prehistory The time before people kept written records.
Record Something written down so that people later can know what happened.
Relic An object that has survived from a much earlier time.
Ruins What is left of old buildings after hundreds or thousands of years.
Scroll A long roll of papyrus or parchment with writing on it.
Source Where information comes from. A letter written at the time is a primary one.
Timeline A line that shows events in the order they happened, from earliest to latest.
Tradition A custom or belief passed from older people to younger people over many years.

First Civilizations 30

Babylon A city on the lower Euphrates, about 85 km south of where Baghdad stands today.
Bronze A metal made mostly of copper with some tin. A whole age is named after it.
Cave Lascaux in France has wall paintings estimated to be 17,000 years old or more.
Civilization A society with cities, government, writing and shared ways of life.
Clay Soft earth that hardens when it dries or is baked. Mesopotamian scribes wrote on tablets of it.
Cuneiform Wedge-shaped writing pressed into wet clay with a reed. It is the oldest writing system known.
Dynasty A line of rulers from one family. Hammurabi was the sixth king of the first one in Babylon.
Euphrates West Asia's longest river, about 2,780 km. It joins the Tigris before reaching the sea.
Flint A hard stone that breaks to a sharp edge. People long ago made tools and started fires with it.
Harappa A city of the Indus Valley, at a site in what is now Punjab, Pakistan.
Hieroglyph A picture sign in Egyptian writing. The Rosetta Stone was the key to reading such signs.
Indus A river of South Asia. Cities with baked-brick houses and drains grew in its valley.
Irrigation Bringing water to fields through ditches and canals so crops can grow on dry land.
Mesopotamia A Greek name that means the land between rivers.
Mummy A body preserved so that it does not decay.
Nile The river of Egypt. It flows north and empties into the Mediterranean Sea.
Nomad A person who moves from place to place instead of living in one settlement.
Papyrus A writing material like thick paper, made from the pith of a plant that grew in the Nile Delta.
Pharaoh A ruler of ancient Egypt. The title comes from Egyptian words meaning great house.
Plow A farm tool pulled through soil to turn it over before planting.
Pyramid The Great one at Giza was built as a tomb for Khufu around 2600 BC, over about 26 years.
Scribe A person trained to read and write when very few people could.
Silk A fine cloth made from the cocoons of a moth's caterpillars. China guarded the method for centuries.
Sphinx The Great one at Giza has a human head on a lion's body and is carved from limestone.
Stele An upright stone slab with carving. Hammurabi's laws stand on a basalt one 2.25 m tall.
Sumer The earliest known civilization, in southern Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq.
Tigris One of the two great rivers of Mesopotamia. The other is the Euphrates.
Tomb A burial place. Tutankhamun's was discovered in 1922 by a team led by Howard Carter.
Wheel A round part that turns on an axle. Carts and chariots could not roll without it.
Ziggurat A huge stepped structure of Mesopotamia, built in levels with a temple at the top.

Empires and Trade Routes 31

Aztec An empire in the Valley of Mexico from 1428 to 1521. Its capital stood on an island in a lake.
Byzantine The name given to the eastern Roman Empire, centered on Constantinople. It lasted until 1453.
Camel The animal that carried goods across the Sahara in long trading caravans.
Caravan Traders crossing a desert together. The traveler Ibn Battuta wrote of about 1,000 camels in one.
Compass A magnetized needle that points north. Chinese sailors were steering by it in the 11th century.
Conquest Taking control of a land and its people by force.
Courier A messenger. Mounted Persian ones were meant to cover the Royal Road in nine days.
Empire Many lands and peoples under one ruler. The Mongol one was the largest ever joined by land.
Gold Mali was likely the largest producer of this metal in the world in the 1300s.
Great Wall Fortifications along the old northern borders of China. The best-known parts are from the Ming dynasty.
Gunpowder An explosive mix of sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter, one of the Four Great Inventions of China.
Inca The largest empire in the Americas before 1492. It was run from the city of Cusco.
Khan A Mongol ruler's title. Kublai, a grandson of Genghis, declared the Yuan dynasty in 1271.
Machu Picchu A citadel of the 1400s on a mountain ridge in Peru, 2,430 meters above sea level.
Mali A West African empire from about 1235. Its ruler Mansa Musa traveled to Mecca in 1324.
Maya A Mesoamerican people who counted in base 20 and drew a shell as their sign for zero.
Merchant A person who buys and sells goods, often carrying them long distances.
Mongol A people of the Asian steppe. Genghis Khan was proclaimed their ruler in 1206.
Mughal An empire in South Asia founded by Babur in 1526. Its ruler Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built.
Ottoman An empire that grew from a small state founded about 1299 by Osman I. It took Constantinople in 1453.
Persia An ancient empire whose Royal Road ran 2,699 km from Susa to Sardis.
Porcelain Fine white pottery fired at 1,200 to 1,400 degrees Celsius. It originated in China.
Salt Mali grew rich partly by controlling and taxing the trade in it from the north.
Samurai A member of the warrior class of Japan, trained from a young age to serve a lord.
Shogun A military ruler of Japan. Such rulers held power for most of the years 1185 to 1868.
Silk Road A network of trade routes across Asia, active from the 2nd century BC to the mid-1400s.
Spice A flavoring such as pepper or cinnamon. Magellan set out to find a sea route to the islands famous for them.
Sultan A Muslim ruler's title. The Ottoman rulers used it.
Timbuktu A city near the Niger River that flourished on the trade in salt, gold and ivory.
Tribute Payment in goods or gold that a conquered people had to send to a ruler.
Zimbabwe The Great stone city of this name was built from the 11th to the 15th century in southern Africa.

Middle Ages 32

Armor Metal or leather covering worn to protect the body in battle.
Castle A fortified home for a lord, with thick walls and towers.
Catapult A machine that hurled rocks a great distance without gunpowder, often at walls.
Cathedral A large and important church, the seat of a bishop.
Charter A written grant of rights from a ruler.
Chivalry The code of conduct expected of knights. It grew up in France from 1170 to 1220.
Crusade One in a run of religious wars of the Middle Ages. The first ran from 1096 to 1099.
Drawbridge A bridge that can be raised so that nobody can cross the ditch below.
Feudalism A system in medieval Europe built on holding land in exchange for service or labor.
Guild An association of craft workers or merchants that set the rules for their trade in a town.
Joust A contest in which two riders charged at each other with long spears.
Knight A mounted soldier in armor who served a lord in medieval Europe.
Lance A long spear carried by a rider on horseback.
Longship The long, slender oared vessel of the Norse, who reached Newfoundland about 1,000 years ago.
Lord A landowner with power over the people who lived on his land.
Magna Carta Latin for Great Charter. King John of England sealed it at Runnymede on 15 June 1215.
Manor A lord's estate, with its house, its fields and the village that worked them.
Medieval Belonging to the Middle Ages, which in Europe ran roughly from the 5th to the late 15th century.
Moat A broad, deep ditch around a fortress, dry or filled with water.
Monastery A place where monks live, work and pray together.
Monk A man who lives in a religious community and follows its rules.
Norman From a duchy in northern France. Duke William's army beat King Harold at Hastings on 14 October 1066.
Peasant A poor farmer who worked the land.
Pilgrimage A long journey to a holy place.
Plague The Black Death struck Europe from 1346 to 1353. The disease spread mainly through flea bites.
Serf A farm worker bound to a lord's land. Unlike a slave, such a worker could not be sold alone.
Shield A board carried on one arm to block blows.
Siege Surrounding a town to cut off its supplies. Constantinople fell in 1453 after one of 53 days.
Squire A boy who carried a knight's shield, saddled his horse and cared for his weapons.
Tapestry A heavy cloth with pictures. The famous Bayeux one, nearly 70 meters long, is really embroidery.
Vassal A person who promised loyalty and service to a lord in return for land.
Viking A seafarer from Scandinavia. Such crews raided, traded and settled from the late 700s to the 1000s.

Renaissance and Exploration 29

Anchor A heavy metal hook dropped on a chain to hold a ship in place.
Armada The Spanish war fleet that left Lisbon late in May 1588 to invade England.
Astrolabe The sea version measured the height of the sun at noon to find a ship's latitude.
Caravel A small, fast sailing ship used by Portuguese and Spanish crews in the 1400s and 1500s.
Cargo The goods a ship carries.
Cartographer A mapmaker. Martin Waldseemüller's world map of 1507 was the first to use the name America.
Colony A settlement or land ruled by a distant country.
Columbus A navigator from Genoa who sailed from Palos with three ships in August 1492.
Conquistador A Spanish soldier and explorer. Cortés and his allies captured the Aztec capital in 1521.
Explorer A person who travels to places little known to them to learn what is there.
Fleet A group of ships sailing under one commander.
Florence The Italian city where the Medici banking family supported artists such as Botticelli and Michelangelo.
Galileo An Italian astronomer who built an improved telescope and saw the four largest moons of Jupiter.
Galleon A large sailing ship with several decks, used as an armed cargo carrier from the 1500s.
Globe A map on a ball. The oldest surviving one was made from 1490 to 1492 and has no Americas on it.
Leonardo The Italian artist who painted the Mona Lisa and filled notebooks with designs for flying machines.
Magellan He led 5 ships out of Spain in 1519. The expedition came home in 1522, the first voyage round the Earth.
Mutiny When a crew refuses orders and turns against its captain.
Navigator The person who works out where a ship is and sets its course.
Pacific The ocean Magellan named. His ships took 98 days to cross it.
Patron A wealthy supporter who pays artists and thinkers so that they can work.
Pioneer One of the first people to go into a new area or try a new idea.
Printing Pressing inked type onto paper. Johannes Gutenberg invented his press around 1440.
Reformation A movement that split the Western church. It is most often dated to Martin Luther's theses of 1517.
Renaissance A time of new art and learning in Europe, first centered in Florence.
Sail A sheet of cloth that catches the wind to move a ship.
Scurvy A sickness caused by too little vitamin C. It killed many sailors on long sea journeys.
Telescope An instrument that makes distant things look closer.
Voyage A long journey by sea.

Revolutions and Industry 29

Abolition Ending slavery by law. A British act of 1833 outlawed it across most of the British Empire.
Bastille A fortress prison in Paris, stormed on 14 July 1789. France keeps the date as a national holiday.
Bolivar Simón, called the Liberator, led six present-day countries to independence from Spain.
Canal A waterway dug by people. The Suez one took from 1859 to 1869 to build and opened on 17 November 1869.
Coal A black rock burned for heat. The first public steam railway ran from mines of it to the town of Stockton.
Constitution The written set of basic rules for how a country is governed.
Cotton A soft plant fiber that is spun into thread.
Engine A machine that turns fuel into movement.
Enlightenment A movement at its peak in the 1700s that prized reason, evidence and individual liberty.
Factory A building where machines and workers make goods in large numbers.
Haiti It won independence from France on 1 January 1804 after a revolt by enslaved people.
Industry The making of goods, especially with machines.
Invention Something new that someone has thought up and made for the first time.
Locomotive The engine that pulls a train.
Loom A frame or machine for weaving thread into cloth.
Mill A building with machinery for grinding grain or making cloth.
Monarchy Rule by a king, a queen or an emperor.
Napoleon Emperor of the French from 1804. He lost his last battle at Waterloo on 18 June 1815.
Parliament A law-making body. An English one called in 1265 grew into the House of Commons.
Railroad The first public one to use steam locomotives opened in England on 27 September 1825.
Reform A change meant to make a law or a system fairer.
Revolution A sudden, great change in who rules or in how people live and work.
Steam James Watt's engine ran on it and became a driving force of the Industrial Revolution.
Strike When workers stop work together to ask for better pay or conditions.
Suffrage The right to vote. In 1893 New Zealand became the first nation where all women had it.
Telegraph It sent messages along a wire as electric signals. Samuel Morse helped develop it and its code.
Textile Cloth made by weaving or knitting.
Tsar The title of the emperors of Russia. The last, Nicholas II, gave up the throne in 1917.
Vaccine Edward Jenner created the first, against smallpox. The name comes from his Latin term for cowpox.

Modern World 26

Apartheid A system of racial segregation in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. The word means separateness.
Astronaut A space traveler. Apollo 11 landed two of them on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
Aviation Flying in aircraft. The Wright brothers made the first powered, controlled flight on December 17, 1903.
Berlin Wall A guarded concrete barrier that divided a German city from 1961 to 1989.
Cold War The rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, with no direct fighting. It ended in 1991.
Computer ENIAC, completed in 1945, was the first general-purpose, electronic, programmable one.
Depression A long, severe slump in business and jobs. The Great one lasted from 1929 to 1939.
Gandhi He led the Salt March of 1930, a 24-day walk of 387 km in protest at a British monopoly.
Heritage Buildings, customs and stories handed down from earlier generations and protected today.
Independence Freedom from rule by another country. India and Pakistan gained theirs in August 1947.
Internet The worldwide network that links computers. The World Wide Web that runs on it was invented in 1989.
Mandela He served 27 years in prison and was South Africa's president from 1994 to 1999.
Migration The movement of people from one place to settle in another.
Newspaper A printed daily or weekly report of events, and a rich source for historians.
Pandemic A disease that spreads across the world, as influenza did from 1918 to 1920.
Peace The time when a war is over and the fighting has stopped.
Penicillin A medicine from mold that fights bacterial infections, discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming.
Photograph A picture made with a camera. It shows how people and places really looked.
Radio Sound sent through the air as waves, with no wires.
Refugee A person forced to leave home by war or disaster.
Rocket A vehicle pushed upward by burning fuel. A Saturn V carried Apollo 11 into space.
Satellite An object that orbits a planet. The first artificial one, Sputnik 1, went up on 4 October 1957.
Television Moving pictures and sound sent to a screen. An estimated 600 million people watched the first moonwalk live.
Titanic The British ocean liner that sank on 15 April 1912, having hit an iceberg on her first crossing.
Treaty A written agreement between countries.
United Nations An organization of 193 member countries. Its charter dates from its signing on 26 June 1945.

How this list was compiled: 208 world history words in 7 themed lists, chosen and defined for this site. Dates, names and places in the clues were checked on 2026-09-19 against the English Wikipedia article for each entry, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Conquest. Two clues that gave away part of their own answer were reworded on 2026-09-20. Licence: own work

How it works

This history word search printable opens on 16 words drawn from 24 favorites such as Pharaoh, Viking and Treaty. Pick one of 7 eras instead, from First Civilizations to Modern World, and print it with its answer key.

Read the full guide

Match the puzzle to your unit

Under Start from a list, History Detective covers how historians work (Artifact, Archive, Timeline). Then come First Civilizations, Empires and Trade Routes, Middle Ages, Renaissance and Exploration, Revolutions and Industry, and Modern World. Each holds about 30 words. For a whole unit, go deeper: ancient India, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, the Middle Ages with 217 words, and World War 1.

Print clues for a review sheet

Tick Show clues, not words, in More options, and each word is replaced by its one-line clue. Pupils read "King John of England sealed it at Runnymede on 15 June 1215", work out Magna Carta, then find it. Two-word answers such as Silk Road are hidden without the space.

For younger pupils, pick Easy History, 54 short words such as Nile, Moat, Serf and Tsar, and take words off the list until 8 are left.
For middle school, pick Hard History and press Hard: Conquistador may then be spelled backwards or on a slant.
A clue sheet fits one page at about 16 clues. For a longer review, print two eras as two puzzles.

Questions and answers

Is there a world history word search PDF?

Yes, through your browser. Press Print or save as PDF and pick Save as PDF where you would choose a printer. The file holds the puzzle, then the answer key on its own page.

Is this a world history word search or an American one?

World. The 7 lists leave the United States to its own pages. The US history word search has 247 words in course order, and the Civil War word search covers the war itself.

Are there other history word puzzles to print?

The history crossword puzzles are vocabulary crosswords and include a Black History set. All the history word search puzzles on this site, each a historical word search with its own checked list, are under social studies word searches.

Are the dates in the clues right?

Every date, name and number was checked against the English Wikipedia article for its topic in September 2026. Where historians give an estimate, the clue does too: the Lascaux paintings are "estimated to be 17,000 years old or more".

All 208 words

History Detective 31

History Detective, continued

First Civilizations 30

Empires and Trade Routes 31

Middle Ages 32

Renaissance and Exploration 29

Revolutions and Industry 29

Modern World 26

How it works

Match the puzzle to your unit

Print clues for a review sheet

Questions and answers

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