autobiography

[ aw-tuh-bahy-og-ruh-fee, -bee-, aw-toh- ]

noun

, plural au·to·bi·og·ra·phies.

1. a history of a person's life written or told by that person.

autobiography

/ ˌɔːtəʊbaɪˈɒɡrəfɪ; ˌɔːtəbaɪ- /

noun

1. an account of a person's life written or otherwise recorded by that person

autobiography

1. A literary work about the writer's own life. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklinand Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa are autobiographical.

Derived Forms

• ˌautobiˈographer, noun

Other Words From

• auto·bi·ogra·pher noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of autobiography¹

First recorded in 1790–1800; auto- ¹ + biography

Example Sentences

For many boarding school students, corporal punishment was regarded as "normal", former Zimbabwean cricketer Henry Olonga, who was attending the camp the night Guide died, said in his 2015 autobiography.

From BBC

Jones wrote in his now-out-of-print 2001 autobiography: "I had been concerned about the potentially volatile diversity of a group who'd never been in the same room together."

From BBC

“In my interpretation, she represented those women before her who came from the hardships of slavery, through the pain of losing loved ones, through overcoming extraordinary depressions and tribulations,” Jamison wrote in her autobiography “Dancing Spirit.”

From Los Angeles Times

Autobiography presents an alternative to identity-blind frameworks that tend to prioritize ideas to the exclusion of individuals and identity-driven frameworks that ignore the power of unifying ideas in favor of individual experience.

From Salon

And an already healthy rivalry was fuelled by Johnny Sexton and Rieko Ioane's spat in the immediate aftermath of last year's World Cup game, which the former Ireland fly-half felt compelled to include in his autobiography.

From BBC

Related Words

• biography
• confession
• diary
• journal
• letter
• life story
• memoir