Meaning & use
autobiography
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Meanings
nouncountable
A book or account in which a person tells the story of their own life.
Grammar: Countable: an autobiography, two autobiographies.
Patterns
- write an autobiography
- an autobiography of someone
The retired pilot wrote an autobiography about his flying years.
I read her autobiography in two days.
His autobiography became a best seller.
noununcountable
The genre or art of writing about your own life.
Grammar: Uncountable when naming the literary type: she studies autobiography.
Patterns
- autobiography as a genre
The class compared autobiography with fiction.
Autobiography can blur the line between memory and invention.
Word forms
| plural | autobiographies |
|---|
Common combinations
- write an autobiography
- She plans to write an autobiography after she retires.
- published autobiography
- His published autobiography reveals new details.
- spiritual autobiography
- The monk's spiritual autobiography is widely read.
- ghostwritten autobiography
- The singer's ghostwritten autobiography was popular.
- read an autobiography
- We read an autobiography of a former slave in class.
Synonyms and how they differ
- memoir
- A memoir focuses on selected memories or one period, while an autobiography tends to cover a whole life.
- life story
- Life story is plainer and can be told aloud or written by someone else.
- confessions
- Confessions emphasizes personal, often private revelations in a life account.
- journal
- A journal records day-to-day entries, not a shaped account of a life.
Opposites
Word family
- autobiographical adjective
- based on or about the author's own life
- autobiographer noun
- a person who writes their own life story
- biography noun
- an account of a life written by someone else
- autobiographically adverb
- in a way that draws on the writer's own life
Commonly confused: autobiography or biography? autobiography or memoir?
autobiography vs biography
A biography is written by another person; an autobiography is written by the subject.
autobiography vs memoir
A memoir is a narrower, more selective account than a full autobiography.
Practice
A book in which a famous chef tells the story of her own life is best called a(n)
Choose one answer.
An autobiography is written by the subject. A biography is written by someone else, and the others are different kinds of books.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “autobiography”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.