biography
Pronunciation
- IPA: /baɪˈɒɡɹəfi/ (UK); /baɪˈɑɡɹəfi/ (US)[1]
Etymology
It is borrowed from New Latin biographia or French biographie,[2][3][4] from Ancient Greek βιογραφία (biographía, “description of a life”), a late Greek word (classical Greek used βίος (bíos) alone),[4][2] from βίος (bíos, “life”) and -γραφία (-graphía, “writing, record”), from γράφω (gráphō, “to write”).[2][4]
Earliest recorded meaning
The histories of individual lives as a branch of literature: 1683, in Dryden's translation of Plutarch's Lives, in Barnhart and the OED;[2][5] the 1680s in Etymonline.[4] Merriam-Webster dates it to 1665.[6]
Semantic evolution
A written history of one person's life is from 1791,[4][5] and the life course of any living being by 1854.[4][5] No one-word verb has become common, though biographize (1800), biography (1844) and biograph (1849) were tried.[4] Biographer is from 1715, in Addison, and biographical from 1738.[2]
Timeline
- 1683 – biography as literature.[2][5]
- 1715 – biographer.[2]
- 1791 – an account of a life.[4][5]
- 1854 – the life course of a being.[4][5]
Modern meaning
Noun
- An account of a person's life written by someone else.
- Such accounts as a genre of literature.
Word family
- biographee
- autobiography
- psychobiography
Related words
- biographer
- biographical
- biopic
- hagiography
- pathography
- bio-
- -graphy
- biology
References
- ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
- ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
- ^ Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
- ^ a b c d e f Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
- ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster