Autobiographical

How to spell autobiographical

16 letters · 7 syllables

How to pronounce autobiographical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does autobiographical mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or based on the writer's own life and personal experiences.

Autobiographical in a sentence

• The novel is clearly autobiographical, drawing on her childhood in the village.

• He insisted that the song was not autobiographical despite the obvious parallels.

Where does autobiographical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This adjective is built entirely from Greek parts: autos meaning 'self', bios meaning 'life', and graphein meaning 'to write'. The noun autobiography, literally a self-written account of one's own life, was coined in English around the end of the 1700s, with the poet Robert Southey often credited for popularising the term in 1809. The adjective autobiographical followed naturally, describing writing or art that draws on the author's own life. The very same graph element sits inside familiar words like photograph, telegraph, and biography, which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps the 'ph' from the Greek letter phi rather than a plain 'f'. Because the word stacks three separate Greek pieces, the trap for adults is keeping every linking vowel in place, especially the 'o' that joins auto and bio and the 'o' before 'graphical'.

How the word is built

• auto- (self)
• bio- (life)
• graph (write)
• -ic-
• -al (adjective suffix)