# Change history for a glossary term

**Category:** [Glossary and blocklists](https://help.totalctrl.app/hc/totalctrl/totalctrl-help-center/en-US/categories/standards-glossary)
**Updated:** 2026-10-04

## What is recorded

Open any glossary term and use **History**. Each entry shows the change as a before and an after — not just the new value — along with who made it and when.

Four fields are tracked, because they are the four that change what the term *means* to somebody following it:

- **Term** — the word itself.

- **Definition** — what it means.

- **Translate as** — the required rendering in that language.

- **Status** — preferred, admitted, suggested, deprecated, forbidden or rejected.

An entry names the fields that actually changed, so a status change and a rewritten definition read as different events rather than one undifferentiated "edited".

## Why it is per language

A term carries one row per language, and they are edited by different people at different times — a translator settling on the German rendering is not the person who wrote the English definition. History is recorded against the language, so "who changed the German?" has an answer.

## It records edits from everywhere

History is written underneath the model, not in the screen that draws the form. An edit made through the term page, a bulk import, or an integration all produce the same entry, because there is one place the change is caught rather than one per way of making it.

## What it does not record

Creating a term is not a change — there is no "before" — and neither is deleting one, which is recorded as a deletion in its own right. Fields that describe rather than define the term (usage notes, part of speech, gender) are not tracked; the four above are what a reader is relying on.

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## Related Articles

- [Deprecating a term, and finding out whether it is still used](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/standards-glossary-deprecated-1)
- [Standards for AI writing: the API and the MCP tool](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/standards-context-api-1)
- [Domain and Subject on a glossary term](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/standards-glossary-domain-subject-1)
- [Standards & Brand Hub webhooks](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/standards-webhooks-1)
- [Blocklists: words that must not be used](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/standards-blocklist-1)

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