memoir

American  

[mem-wahr, -wawr] / ˈmɛm wɑr, -wɔr /

noun

• memoirs
  plural

1. a record of events written by a person having intimate knowledge of them and based on personal observation.

2. Usually memoirs.

   1. an account of one's personal life and experiences; autobiography.

   2. the published record of the proceedings of a group or organization, as of a learned society.

3. a biography or biographical sketch.

---

memoir British  

/ ˈmɛmwɑː /

noun

1. a biography or historical account, esp one based on personal knowledge

2. an essay or monograph, as on a specialized topic

3. obsolete a memorandum

---

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• memoirist
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• memoirs
  plural

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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

memoir memoirs

Harry published a memoir in 2023 in which he cited the media as a major reason for his decision to quit the U.K. and royal life.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

Trauma expert, Dr Gabor Mate, was interviewed by Harry about healing and loss ahead of the publication of the Duke of Sussex's memoir Spare.

From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026

Vance gave a speech at the steel plant where his grandfather worked for 40 years in Middletown, Ohio, the blue-collar town which featured in his bestselling 2016 memoir "Hillbilly Elegy."

From Barron's ● Aug. 21, 2026

In the actor’s memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” which she published in May, she wrote that she and Hickerson met in 2018 at a West Hollywood bar.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2026

The counselor encouraged Shin to turn his therapeutic diary into the memoir that the Database Center published in Korean in 2007.

From "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" by Blaine Harden

The investigation sputtered for decades because of a lack of evidence, but the cold case was revived with the publication in 2019 of Davis's memoirs.

From Barron's ● Aug. 10, 2026

Gordon Brown reflects in his memoirs the agonising private conversations he had about a snap election and in deciding against it found himself going "from near hero to near zero in a day."

From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026

What distinguishes “With the Old Breed” from many other war memoirs is its focus on moral courage.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 21, 2026

Davis, as Columbia’s general counsel, felt certain lines in the protest song were libelous and told the infuriated songwriter that it wouldn’t make it onto the record, he wrote in one of his two memoirs.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 22, 2026

These memoirs were later added to and edited by other veterans.

From "A Thousand Sisters" by Elizabeth Wein

Related Words

• account
• anecdote
• autobiography
• biography
• chronicle
• diary
• essay
• journal
• life
• life story
• memory
• narrative
• note
• recollection
• reminiscence
• thesis
• treatise