pathography
pathography noun: a biography that highlights the negative aspects of its subject's life.
Noun
pathography (plural pathographies)
- A biography that highlights the negative aspects of its subject's life.
- Though this has been an era of magisterial biographies by such writers as Leon Edel, Richard Ellmann, Joseph Frank, Judith Thurman and Justin Kaplan, among others, it has also evolved a new subspecies of the genre to which the name "pathography" might usefully be given: hagiography's diminished and...[1988 August 28, Joyce Carol Oates, “Adventures in Abandonment”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
- One would think there is little to be added, if only because of the avalanche of books — biographies, meta-biographies, pathographies (to borrow Joyce Carol Oates’s term), memoirs, critical studies, letters, journals, novels — that have been published about Plath since her suicide (which, for some...2020 October 27, Daphne Merkin, “Shifting the Focus From Sylvia Plath’s Tragic Death to Her Brilliant Life”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
- A biography that explores the effects of a disease on its subject's life.
Forms of pathography
| plural | pathographies |
|---|
Origin of pathography
From patho- + -graphy.
Words formed from pathography
Words that rhyme with pathography
- geography
- choreography
- orthography
- topography
- chirography
- hagiography
- heliography
- phonography
- semiography
- acrography
- autography
- bibliography
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- cacography
- chromography
- demography
- discography
- iconography
- isography
- logography
- ludography
- metallography
- micrography
- paleography
- pantography
- pornography
- scenography
- typography
- videography
- aerography
- archaeography
- arteriography
- arthrography
- autobiography
- autohagiography
- biogeography
- biography
- cartography
- cerography
- chronography
- cinematography
- cosmography
- crystallography
- dactylography
- demonography
- dittography
- electrography
- enterography
- ethnography
- etymography
- exogeography
- fluorography
- galvanography
- glossography
- heterography
- historiography
- homography
- horologiography
- ichnography
- laryngography
- mechanography
Questions about pathography
- What does pathography mean?
- Pathography means a biography that highlights the negative aspects of its subject's life.
- What part of speech is pathography?
- Pathography is a noun.
- What is the plural of pathography?
- The plural of pathography is pathographies.
Words near pathography in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pathography (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “pathography.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pathography. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.