| word | hagiography |
|---|---|
| definition | (1) Biography of saints. (2) Biography that idealizes or idolizes. |
| eg_sentence | According to the new biography, which should really be called a hagiography, the former prime minister doesn't seem to have done anything small-minded or improper in his entire life. |
| explanation | For those able to read, reading stories of the lives of the saints was a popular pastime for centuries, and books collecting short saints' biographies were best sellers. These often included terrifically colorful stories (about slaying dragons, magically traveling through space, etc.) that were perhaps a bit too good to be strictly true, and after finding God not one of them ever did a single thing that wasn't saintly—and some of them may not have actually existed. Still today, hagiographic accounts of the lives of politicians and pop-culture stars are being written, though there now seems to be a bigger audience for biographies that seek out the not-so-wholesome secrets of the person's life, sometimes even making up a few of them. |
| IPA | ˌhægiˈɑgrəfi |
Tags: mwvb::unit:13, mwvb::unit:13:word, mwvb::word, mwvb::word-cloze, mwvb::word-reverse, obsidian_to_anki
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