Account, report, chronicle, version and story denote a statement of actual events or conditions or of purported occurrences or conditions.
An account is an oral or written, detailed, often firsthand statement.
- Lord Mountfalcon asked for an account of her passage over to the island; receiving distressingly full particulars
—Meredith)
A report is an account, usually of something witnessed or investigated, given to an employer or a superior.
- spies send in their reports in cipher
- the secretary gave a verbatim report of the conference
A chronicle is a detailed and extended account or report of events in their order of occurrence.
- for ’tis a chronicle of day by day, not a relation for a breakfast
—Shak.
A version or story is a statement of purported facts. Version always and story often imply contrast with another statement of the same events and, usually, difference in details.
But whereas version commonly implies difference of detail or of interpretation owing to limitations in each point of view, story often implies actual or suspected falsification.
- the Democratic and the Republican version of the state of the nation
- the witness had been primed to tell a different story
- he returned after a week’s absence with a story of having been held captive by kidnapers