annal

The word 'annal' traces its lineage directly to the Latin annus, meaning "year," a term of Proto-Indo-European origin related to cycles of time. In ancient Rome, the annales were the official priestly records of events, meticulously kept on a year-by-year basis. This practice of chronological, annual record-keeping was adopted into Medieval Latin and later into English, preserving the core concept of a yearly register. Thus, the modern abstract meaning of a sequential historical record is a direct inheritance from this Roman administrative and historiographical tradition.

The word is a simplex. It is a direct borrowing from the Latin annalis, meaning "yearly," which itself derives from annus, meaning "year."