Meaning & use
biographer
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Meaning
nouncountable
A person who writes the story of someone else's life.
Grammar: Countable: a biographer, two biographers.
Patterns
- a biographer of someone
- someone's biographer
The biographer spent ten years researching the life of the famous scientist.
She is the official biographer of the former president.
A good biographer must be both a careful historian and a skilled storyteller.
Word forms
| plural | biographers |
|---|
Common combinations
- official biographer
- The family chose an official biographer to write the authorized life story.
- presidential biographer
- He is best known as a presidential biographer.
- biographer of
- She became the biographer of several famous artists.
- write as a biographer
- He writes as a biographer, not as a novelist.
Synonyms and how they differ
- life writer
- A general term for anyone who writes about lives, including autobiographers; biographer is more specific.
- historian
- A historian studies past events broadly; a biographer focuses on one person's life.
Word family
- biography noun
- The written account of someone's life.
- biographical adjective
- Relating to a biography or to a person's life.
- autobiographer noun
- A person who writes about their own life.
Commonly confused: biographer or autobiographer?
biographer vs autobiographer
An autobiographer writes about their own life; a biographer writes about someone else's life.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'biographer' correctly?
Choose one answer.
A biographer is a person who writes about someone else's life, so option B is correct. Option An is wrong because she would be an autobiographer, and option C is wrong because a biographer writes about another person, not themselves. Option D confuses the person with the book (a biography).
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “biographer”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.