Really bad French article in historical record (9)
I believe the answer is:
chronicle
'historical record' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'really bad french article' is the wordplay.
'really bad' becomes 'chronic' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'french article' becomes 'le' (definite article in French).
'chronic'+'le'='CHRONICLE'
'in' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for chronicle that I've seen before include "Register of events over time" , "(Keep an) historical record" , "Continuous record of events in order of time" , "Account of important events" , "History" .)