memoir
noun
Simple meaning
An autobiography; a book describing the personal experiences of an author.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
mehmwahrSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmɛmwɑɹ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
An autobiography; a book describing the personal experiences of an author.
A biography; a book describing the experiences of a subject from personal knowledge of the subject or from sources with personal knowledge of the subject.
An account of the author's personal experiences
Any form of narrative describing the personal experiences of a writer.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An autobiography; a book describing the personal experiences of an author.
Used this way, memoir is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use memoir
- “She is writing a memoir about her experiences traveling the world alone.”noun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.