Memoir

How to spell memoir

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce memoir

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does memoir mean?

1. nounA written account of the author's own life and personal experiences.

Memoir in a sentence

• The retired diplomat spent two years writing her memoir.

• His memoir describes growing up on a remote sheep farm.

Where does memoir come from?

Language of origin: French

This word entered English in the late 1500s from the French mémoire, which originally meant a note, a record, or a written reminder of something worth remembering. The French word descends directly from the Latin memoria, meaning 'memory' or 'remembrance', which in turn grew from memor, an adjective meaning 'mindful' or 'remembering'. At first English speakers used memoir for an official report or a research paper, and the plural memoirs came to mean a personal account of events one had lived through; the singular settled into its modern sense of a book about the author's own life. The same Latin memoria root sits inside everyday relatives such as 'memory', 'memorial', and 'memorable', which is a handy reminder of where the word begins. The spelling trap is the French ending: the word keeps the foreign -oir cluster (sounded 'mem-wah'), so writers must resist turning it into the English-looking 'memior' or 'memwar'.

How the word is built

• memoir (from French mémoire: memory, written record), from Latin memoria