biographer
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of biographer
First recorded in 1705–15; biograph(y) + -er 1
Explanation
A biographer is a writer who specializes in true stories of other people's lives. The finished books that biographers publish are called biographies. In some cases, well-known writers, actors, and other public figures work with biographers in order to collaborate on their own biographies. Other times, biographers research the lives of their subjects after they've died. In the 1660s, they were known as biographists. The root of all variations on biography is the Late Greek biographia, "description of life," from bio-, "life," and graphia, "record or account."
Vocabulary lists containing biographer
Words to Live By: Bio
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Roots: bio
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Roots: graph
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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.
After Clara died in 1896, her eldest daughter, Marie, purged even more, sharing only limited selections of Clara’s diaries with Clara’s biographer.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
If you’ve ever read anything by biographer Robert Caro, you get the feeling that he could wring 100 pages out of what he had for breakfast.
From Salon ● Sep. 18, 2026
“I don’t know a single Black girl who hasn’t had a profound connection to ‘Black Girl’s Window,’ ” curator and Saar’s biographer, Zoé Whitley, told The Times in a recent interview.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
The volumes were once part of the personal library of pioneering Indian historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Aurangzeb's most influential biographer.
From BBC ● Jun. 27, 2026
He was, as one biographer observed with an all but audible sigh, "almost entirely innocent of rhetorical accomplishments."
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
