memoir
Americannoun
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memoirs
plural
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a record of events written by a person having intimate knowledge of them and based on personal observation.
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Usually memoirs.
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an account of one's personal life and experiences; autobiography.
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the published record of the proceedings of a group or organization, as of a learned society.
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a biography or biographical sketch.
noun
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a biography or historical account, esp one based on personal knowledge
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an essay or monograph, as on a specialized topic
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obsolete a memorandum
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of memoir
First recorded in 1560–70; from French mémoire, from Latin memoria; see memory
Explanation
The beginning of a short memoir of your life might read like this: I was born on a dark and stormy night. My days remained blustery — school was difficult for me, and my parents argued all of the time. My luck changed when... A memoir is a person's own account of his or her life. Memoirs allow for a bit more literary freedom than autobiographies as they involve introspection and a creative view of your past. As you go through life or a phase in life, you can write things down in your memoirs so that at a later time, you can publish a memoir about it.
Vocabulary lists containing memoir
TEKS ELAR Academic Vocabulary List (5th-7th grades)
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Literary Genres - Introductory
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25 Words from "Baseball and Black History"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Davies - who recently released his memoir 'The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television' - got his first break aged 22 working in BBC children's TV "for £50 a day".
From BBC ● Oct. 14, 2026
In her new memoir, “Famesick,” Dunham chronicles her struggles with debilitating illness over six seasons of her hit HBO show.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2026
John Benjamin Hickey directs this tale of a well-connected family whose status is put at risk when its daughter returns home having written a tell-all memoir.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 11, 2026
Her memoir, “Free Range Girl,” will be out Oct.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
His memoir had flopped, about five hundred copies sold from a printing of three thousand.
From "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" by Blaine Harden
Three ominous shadows stretch over the memoirs of Sylvester Stallone and Michael Douglas, though none is cast by the authors themselves.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
Prime ministerial memoirs tell the stories of how central a moment it is in the week of any occupant of 10 Downing Street.
From BBC ● Sep. 2, 2026
The investigation sputtered for decades because of a lack of evidence, but the case was revived when Davis's memoirs were published in 2019.
From Barron's ● Aug. 17, 2026
All book adaptations, whether from novels or memoirs, could stand to embellish the facts here and there, or go ahead and reinvent the wheel when possible.
From Salon ● Aug. 12, 2026
It was a radical shift from the kind of assignment that dominates high school writing instruction today, in which students are asked to write memoirs and personal reflections.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
