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.

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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

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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

In May, the actor published a memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” in which she recounted the struggles of celebrity.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 17, 2026

Monroe had a copy of Agnes de Mille’s memoir delivered to her bungalow at the Bel-Air Hotel in Los Angeles in October 1960.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 17, 2026

Mr. Hoffman shifts from personal memoir to vivid nature writing—as if a modern Thoreau had arrived in the Balkans, eyes open, and begun to write a book of unusual beauty.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

Actress and author Celia Imrie will speak about her memoir Elegant Hustler, in which she shares tales from her travels, from Arctic quests for the Northern Lights to exploring India's railways.

From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026

Holmes inserted into his memoir a “prison diary” that he claimed to have kept since the day he arrived at Moyamensing.

From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson

Davis now says he was in Los Angeles the night of the Shakur killing and that he has never even read his own memoirs.

From Barron's ● Aug. 10, 2026

One of her biggest writers is the author-activist Glennon Doyle, who has chronicled addiction, divorce and an unexpected romance with soccer player Abby Wambach across a string of blockbuster self-help memoirs.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 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

The book wasn’t written so much as it was built by a prominent ghostwriter, a cadre of well-placed friends and colleagues, and a publishing industry that’s made billions of dollars from trauma memoirs by women.

From Salon ● Jun. 25, 2026

This account Bilbo set down in his memoirs, and he seems never to have altered it himself, not even after the Council of Elrond.

From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien

Related Words

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