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Definition of biography

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So You've Been Asked to Submit a Biography

In a library, the word biography refers both to a kind of book and to a section where books of that kind are found. Each biography tells the story of a real person's life. A biography may be about someone who lived long ago, recently, or even someone who is still living, though in the last case it must necessarily be incomplete. The term autobiography refers to a biography written by the person it's about. Autobiographies are of course also necessarily incomplete.

Sometimes biographies are significantly shorter than a book—something anyone who's been asked to submit a biography for, say, a conference or a community newsletter will be glad to know. Often the word in these contexts is shortened to bio , a term that can be both a synonym of biography and a term for what is actually a biographical sketch: a brief description of a person's life. These kinds of biographies—bios—vary, but many times they are only a few sentences long. Looking at bios that have been used in the same context can be a useful guide in determining what to put in your own.

Examples of biography in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'biography.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Late Greek biographia , from Greek bi- + -graphia -graphy

1665, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Dictionary Entries Near biography

biographize

Cite this Entry

“Biography.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biography. Accessed 28 Apr. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of biography, more from merriam-webster on biography.

Nglish: Translation of biography for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of biography for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about biography

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[ bahy- og -r uh -fee , bee- ]

the biography of Byron by Marchand.

• an account in biographical form of an organization, society, theater, animal, etc.
• such writings collectively.
• the writing of biography as an occupation or field of endeavor.

/ baɪˈɒɡrəfɪ; ˌbaɪəˈɡræfɪkəl /

• an account of a person's life by another
• such accounts collectively
• The story of someone's life. The Life of Samuel Johnson , by James Boswell , and Abraham Lincoln , by Carl Sandburg , are two noted biographies. The story of the writer's own life is an autobiography .

Discover More

Derived forms.

• biˈographer , noun
• biographical , adjective
• ˌbioˈgraphically , adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of biography 1

Example Sentences

Barrett didn’t say anything on Tuesday to contradict our understanding of her ideological leanings based on her past rulings, past statements and biography.

Republicans, meanwhile, focused mostly on her biography — including her role as a working mother of seven and her Catholic faith — and her credentials, while offering few specifics about her record as a law professor and judge.

She delivered an inspiring biography at one point, reflecting on the sacrifice her mother made to emigrate to the United States.

As Walter Isaacson pointed out in his biography of Benjamin Franklin, Franklin proposed the postal system as a vital network to bond together the 13 disparate colonies.

Serving that end, the book is not an in-depth biography as much as a summary of Galileo’s life and science, plus a thorough recounting of the events leading up to his famous trial.

The Amazon biography for an author named Papa Faal mentions both Gambia and lists a military record that matches the FBI report.

For those unfamiliar with Michals, an annotated biography and useful essays are included.

Did you envision your Pryor biography as extending your previous investigation—aesthetically and historically?

But Stephen Kotkin's new biography reveals a learned despot who acted cunningly to take advantage of the times.

Watching novelists insult one another is one of the primary pleasures of his biography.

He also published two volumes of American Biography, a work which his death abridged.

Mme. de Chaulieu gave her husband the three children designated in the duc's biography.

The biography of great men always has been, and always will be read with interest and profit.

I like biography far better than fiction myself: fiction is too free.

The Bookman: "A more entertaining narrative whether in biography or fiction has not appeared in recent years."

Related Words

• autobiography

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Definition of biography noun from the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary

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Learning from the experiences of others is what makes us human.

At the core of every biography is the story of someone’s humanity. While biographies come in many sub-genres, the one thing they all have in common is loyalty to the facts, as they’re available at the time. Here’s how we define biography, a look at its origins, and some popular types.

“Biography” Definition

A biography is simply the story of a real person’s life. It could be about a person who is still alive, someone who lived centuries ago, someone who is globally famous, an unsung hero forgotten by history, or even a unique group of people. The facts of their life, from birth to death (or the present day of the author), are included with life-changing moments often taking center stage. The author usually points to the subject’s childhood, coming-of-age events, relationships, failures, and successes in order to create a well-rounded description of her subject.

Biographies require a great deal of research. Sources of information could be as direct as an interview with the subject providing their own interpretation of their life’s events. When writing about people who are no longer with us, biographers look for primary sources left behind by the subject and, if possible, interviews with friends or family. Historical biographers may also include accounts from other experts who have studied their subject.

The biographer’s ultimate goal is to recreate the world their subject lived in and describe how they functioned within it. Did they change their world? Did their world change them? Did they transcend the time in which they lived? Why or why not? And how? These universal life lessons are what make biographies such a meaningful read.

Origins of the Biography

Greco-Roman literature honored the gods as well as notable mortals. Whether winning or losing, their behaviors were to be copied or seen as cautionary tales. One of the earliest examples written exclusively about humans is Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (probably early 2 nd century AD). It’s a collection of biographies in which a pair of men, one Greek and one Roman, are compared and held up as either a good or bad example to follow.

In the Middle Ages, Einhard’s The Life of Charlemagne (around 817 AD) stands out as one of the most famous biographies of its day. Einhard clearly fawns over Charlemagne’s accomplishments throughout, yet it doesn’t diminish the value this biography has brought to centuries of historians since its writing.

Considered the earliest modern biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) by James Boswell looks like the biographies we know today. Boswell conducted interviews, performed years of research, and created a compelling narrative of his subject.

The genre evolves as the 20th century arrives, and with it the first World War. The 1920s saw a boom in autobiographies in response. Robert Graves’ Good-Bye to All That (1929) is a coming-of age story set amid the absurdity of war and its aftermath. That same year, Mahatma Gandhi wrote The Story of My Experiments with Truth , recalling how the events of his life led him to develop his theories of nonviolent rebellion. In this time, celebrity tell-alls also emerged as a popular form of entertainment. With the horrors of World War II and the explosion of the civil rights movement, American biographers of the late 20 th century had much to archive. Instantly hailed as some of the best writing about the war, John Hersey’s Hiroshima (1946) tells the stories of six people who lived through those world-altering days. Alex Haley wrote the as-told-to The Autobiography of Malcom X (1965). Yet with biographies, the more things change, the more they stay the same. One theme that persists is a biographer’s desire to cast its subject in an updated light, as in Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair that Shaped a First Lady by Susan Quinn (2016).

Types of Biographies

Contemporary Biography: Authorized or Unauthorized

The typical modern biography tells the life of someone still alive, or who has recently passed. Sometimes these are authorized — written with permission or input from the subject or their family — like Dave Itzkoff’s intimate look at the life and career of Robin Williams, Robin . Unauthorized biographies of living people run the risk of being controversial. Kitty Kelley’s infamous His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra so angered Sinatra, he tried to prevent its publication.

Historical Biography

The wild success of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is proof that our interest in historical biography is as strong as ever. Miranda was inspired to write the musical after reading Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton , an epic 800+ page biography intended to cement Hamilton’s status as a great American. Paula Gunn Allen also sets the record straight on another misunderstood historical figure with Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat , revealing details about her tribe, her family, and her relationship with John Smith that are usually missing from other accounts. Historical biographies also give the spotlight to people who died without ever getting the recognition they deserved, such as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks .

Biography of a Group

When a group of people share unique characteristics, they can be the topic of a collective biography. The earliest example of this is Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pirates (1724), which catalogs the lives of notorious pirates and establishes the popular culture images we still associate with them. Smaller groups are also deserving of a biography, as seen in David Hajdu’s Positively 4th Street , a mesmerizing behind-the-scenes look at the early years of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña as they establish the folk scene in New York City. Likewise, British royal family fashion is a vehicle for telling the life stories of four iconic royals – Queen Elizabeth II, Diana, Kate, and Meghan – in HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style by style journalist Elizabeth Holmes.

Autobiography

This type of biography is written about one’s self, spanning an entire life up to the point of its writing. One of the earliest autobiographies is Saint Augustine’s The Confessions (400), in which his own experiences from childhood through his religious conversion are told in order to create a sweeping guide to life. Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of six autobiographies that share all the pain of her childhood and the long road that led to her work in the civil rights movement, and a beloved, prize-winning writer.

Memoirs are a type of autobiography, written about a specific but vital aspect of one’s life. In Toil & Trouble , Augusten Burroughs explains how he has lived his life as a witch. Mikel Jollett’s Hollywood Park recounts his early years spent in a cult, his family’s escape, and his rise to success with his band, The Airborne Toxic Event. Barack Obama’s first presidential memoir, A Promised Land , charts his path into politics and takes a deep dive into his first four years in office.

Fictional Biography

Fictional biographies are no substitute for a painstakingly researched scholarly biography, but they’re definitely meant to be more entertaining. Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler constructs Zelda and F. Scott’s wild, Jazz-Age life, told from Zelda’s point of view. The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict brings readers into the secret life of Hollywood actress and wartime scientist, Hedy Lamarr. These imagined biographies, while often whimsical, still respect the form in that they depend heavily on facts when creating setting, plot, and characters.

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What Is Biography? Definition, Usage, and Literary Examples

Biography definition.

A  biography  (BYE-og-ruh-fee) is a written account of one person’s life authored by another person. A biography includes all pertinent details from the subject’s life, typically arranged in a chronological order. The word  biography  stems from the Latin  biographia , which succinctly explains the word’s definition:  bios  = “life” +  graphia  = “write.”

Since the advent of the written word, historical writings have offered information about real people, but it wasn’t until the 18th century that biographies evolved into a separate literary genre.  Autobiographies  and memoirs fall under the broader biography genre, but they are distinct literary forms due to one key factor: the subjects themselves write these works. Biographies are popular source materials for documentaries, television shows, and motion pictures.

The History of Biographies

The biography form has its roots in Ancient Rome and Greece. In 44 BCE, Roman writer Cornelius Nepos published  Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae  ( Lives of the Generals ), one of the earliest recorded biographies. In 80 CE, Greek writer Plutarch released  Parallel Lives , a sweeping work consisting of 48 biographies of famous men. In 121 CE, Roman historian Suetonius wrote  De vita Caesarum  ( On the Lives of the Caesars ), a series of 12 biographies detailing the lives of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire. These were among the most widely read biographies of their time, and at least portions of them have survived intact over the millennia.

During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church had a notable influence on biographies. Historical, political, and cultural biographies fell out of favor. Biographies of religious figures—including saints, popes, and church founders—replaced them. One notable exception was Italian painter/architect Giorgio Vasari’s 1550 biography,  The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects , which was immensely popular. In fact, it is one of the first examples of a bestselling book.

Still, it wasn’t until the 18th century that authors began to abandon multiple subjects in a single work and instead focus their research and writing on one subject. Scholars consider James Boswell’s 1791  The Life of Samuel Johnson  to be the first modern biography. From here, biographies were established as a distinct literary genre, separate from more general historical writing.

As understanding of psychology and sociology grew in the 19th and early 20th centuries, biographies further evolved, offering up even more comprehensive pictures of their subjects. Authors who played major roles in this contemporary approach to biographing include Lytton Strachey, Gamaliel Bradford, and Robert Graves.

Types of Biographies

While all biographical works chronicle the lives of real people, writers can present the information in several different ways.

• Popular biographies are life histories written for a general readership.  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks  by Rebecca Skloot and  Into the Wild  by Jon Krakauer are two popular examples.
• Critical biographies discuss the relationship between the subject’s life and the work they produced or were involved in; for example,  The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune  by Conor O’Clery and  Unpresidented: A Biography of Donald Trump  by Martha Brockenbrough.
• Historical biographies put greater understanding on how the subject’s life and contributions affected or were affected by the times in which they lived; see  John Adams  by David McCullough and  Catherine the Great  by Peter K. Massie.
• Literary biographies concentrate almost exclusively on writers and artists, blending a conventional  narrative  of the historical facts of the subject’s life with an exploration of how these facts impacted their creative output. Some examples include  Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay  by Nancy Milford and  Jackson Pollock: An American Saga  by Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh.
• Reference biographies are more scholarly writings, usually written by multiple authors and covering multiple lives around a single topic. They verify facts, provide background details, and contribute supplemental information resources, like bibliographies, glossaries, and historical documents; for example,  Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007  and the  Dictionary of Canadian Biography .
• Fictional biographies, or biographical novels, like  The Other Boleyn Girl  by Philippa Gregory, incorporate creative license into the retelling of a real person’s story by taking on the structure and freedoms of a novel. The term can also describe novels in which authors give an abundance of background information on their characters, to the extent that the novel reads more like a biography than fiction. An example of this is George R.R. Martin’s  Fire and Blood , a novel detailing the history of a royal family from his popular  A Song of Ice and Fire

Biographies and Filmed Entertainment

Movie makers and television creators frequently produce biographical stories, either as dramatized productions based on real people or as nonfiction accounts.

Documentary

This genre is a nonfictional movie or television show that uses historical records to tell the story of a subject. The subject might be a one person or a group of people, or it might be a certain topic or theme. To present a biography in a visually compelling way, documentaries utilize archival footage, recreations, and interviews with subjects, scholars, experts, and others associated with the subject.

Famous film documentaries include  Grey Gardens,  a biography of two of Jacqueline Kennedy’s once-wealthy cousins, who, at the time of filming, lived in squalor in a condemned mansion in the Hamptons; and  I Am Not Your Negro , a biography of the life and legacy of pioneering American author James Baldwin.

Television documentary series tell one story over the course of several episodes, like  The Jinx :  The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst , a biography of the real estate heir and alleged serial killer that focused on his suspected crimes. There are many nonfiction television shows that use a documentary format, but subjects typically change from one episode to the next, such as A&E’s  Biography  and PBS’s  POV .

These films are biographical motion pictures, written by screenwriters and performed by actors. They often employ a certain amount of creative liberty in their interpretation of a real life. This is largely done to maintain a feasible runtime; capturing all of the pivotal moments of a subject’s life in a 90- or 120-minute movie is all but impossible. So, filmmakers might choose to add, eliminate, or combine key events and characters, or they may focus primarily on one or only a few aspects of the subject’s life. Some popular examples:  Coal Miner’s Daughter , a biography of country music legend Loretta Lynn;  Malcom X , a biopic centered on the civil rights leader of the same name; and  The King’s Speech , a dramatization of Prince Albert’s efforts to overcome a stutter and ascend the English throne.

Semi-fictionalized account

This approach takes a real-life event and interprets or expands it in ways that stray beyond what actually happened. This is done for entertainment and to build the story so it fits the filmmaker’s vision or evolves into a longer form, such as a multi-season television show. These accounts sometimes come with the disclaimer that they are “inspired by true events.” Examples of semi-fictionalized accounts are the TV series  Orange Is the New Black ,  Masters of Sex , and  Mozart of the Jungle —each of which stem from at least one biographical element, but showrunners expounded upon to provide many seasons of entertainment.

The Functions of Biography

Biographies inform readers about the life of a notable person. They are a way to introduce readers to the work’s subject—the historical details, the subject’s motivations and psychological underpinnings, and their environment and the impact they had, both in the short and long term.

Because the author is somewhat removed from their subject, they can offer a more omniscient, third-person narrative account. This vantage point allows the author to put certain events into a larger context; compare and contrast events, people, and behaviors predominant in the subject’s life; and delve into psychological and sociological themes of which the subject may not have been aware.

Also, a writer structures a biography to make the life of the subject interesting and readable. Most biographers want to entertain as well as inform, so they typically use a traditional  plot  structure—an introduction,  conflict , rising of tension, a climax, a resolution, and an ending—to give the life story a narrative shape. While the ebb and flow of life is a normal day-to-day rhythm, it doesn’t necessarily make for entertaining reading. The job of the writer, then, becomes one of shaping the life to fit the elements of a good plot.

Writers Known for Biographies

Many modern writers have dedicated much of their careers to biographies, such as:

• Kitty Kelley, author of  Jackie Oh! An Intimate Biography; His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra ; and  The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty
• Antonia Fraser, author of  Mary Queen of Scots ;  Cromwell; Our Chief of Men ; and  The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605
• David McCullough, author of  The Path Between the Seas; Truman ; and  John Adams
• Andrew Morton, author of  Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words; Madonna ; and  Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography
• Alison Weir, author of  The Six Wives of Henry VIII; Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God; Queen of England ; and  Katherine Swynford: The Story of John of Gaunt and His Scandalous Duchess

Examples of Biographies

1. James Boswell,  The Life of Samuel Johnson

The biography that ushered in the modern era of true-life writing,  The Life of Samuel Johnson  covered the entirety of its subject’s life, from his birth to his status as England’s preeminent writer to his death. Boswell was a personal acquaintance of Johnson, so he was able to draw on voluminous amounts of personal conversations the two shared.

What also sets this biography apart is, because Boswell was a contemporary of Johnson, readers see Johnson in the context of his own time. He wasn’t some fabled figure that a biographer was writing about centuries later; he was someone to whom the author had access, and Boswell could see the real-world influence his subject had on life in the here and now.

2. Sylvia Nasar,  A Beautiful Mind

Nasar’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize-nominated biography of mathematician John Nash introduced legions of readers to Nash’s remarkable life and genius. The book opens with Nash’s childhood and follows him through his education, career, personal life, and struggles with schizophrenia. It ends with his acceptance of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics. In addition to a Pulitzer nomination,  A Beautiful Mind  won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, was a  New York Times  bestseller, and provided the basis for the Academy Award-winning 2001 film of the same name.

3. Catherine Clinton,  Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

Clinton’s biography of the abolitionist icon is a large-scale epic that chronicles Tubman’s singular life. It starts at her birth in the 1820s as the slave Araminta Ross, continuing through her journey to freedom; her pivotal role in the Underground Railroad; her Moses-like persona; and her death in 1913.

Because Tubman could not read or write, she left behind no letters, diaries, or other personal papers in her own hand and voice. Clinton reconstructed Tubman’s history entirely through other source material, and historians often cite this work as the quintessential biography of Tubman’s life.

4. Megan Mayhew Bergman,  Almost Famous Women

Almost Famous Women  is not a biography in the strictest sense of the word; it is a fictional interpretation of real-life women. Each short story revolves around a woman from history with close ties to fame, such as movie star Marlene Dietrich, Standard Oil heiress Marion “Joe” Carstairs, aviatrix Beryl Markham, Oscar Wilde’s niece Dolly, and Lord Byron’s daughter Allegra. Mayhew Bergman imagines these colorful women in equally colorful episodes that put them in a new light—a light that perhaps offers them the honor and homage that history denied them.

Further Resources on Biography

Newsweek  compiled their picks for the  75 Best Biographies of All Time .

The Open Education Database has a list of  75 Biographies to Read Before You Die .

Goodreads put together a list of readers’  best biography selections .

If you’re looking to write biographies,  Infoplease  has instructions for writing shorter pieces, while  The Writer   has practical advice for writing manuscript-length bios.

Ranker  collected  a comprehensive list of famous biographers .

Related Terms

• Autobiography
• Short Story

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Meaning of biography in English

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• This biography offers a few glimpses of his life before he became famous .
• Her biography revealed that she was not as rich as everyone thought .
• The biography was a bit of a rush job .
• The biography is an attempt to uncover the inner man.
• The biography is woven from the many accounts which exist of things she did.
• exercise book
• novelistically
• young adult

biography | American Dictionary

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Examples of biography

Translations of biography.

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biography verb

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What does the verb biography mean?

There is one meaning in OED's entry for the verb biography . See ‘Meaning & use’ for definition, usage, and quotation evidence.

How common is the verb biography ?

How is the verb biography pronounced, british english, u.s. english, where does the verb biography come from.

Earliest known use

The earliest known use of the verb biography is in the late 1700s.

OED's earliest evidence for biography is from 1794, in the writing of S. Whyte.

It is also recorded as a noun from the mid 1600s.

biography is formed within English, by conversion.

Etymons: biography n.

Nearby entries

• biograph, n. 1825–
• biograph, v. 1776–
• biographee, n. 1812–
• biographer, n. 1644–
• biographic, adj. 1752–
• biographical, adj. 1668–
• biographically, adv. ?1719–
• biographist, n. a1661–
• biographize, v. 1793–
• biography, n. 1661–
• biography, v. 1794–
• biographying, n. 1858–
• biohacker, n. 1988–
• biohacking, n. 1992–
• biohazard, n. 1965–
• biohazardous, adj. 1973–
• bioherm, n. 1928–
• biohermal, adj. 1937–
• bioidentical, adj. 1995–
• bioimaging, n. 1983–
• bioindicator, n. 1955–

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Meaning & use

Pronunciation, compounds & derived words, entry history for biography, v..

biography, v. was revised in November 2010.

biography, v. was last modified in March 2024.

oed.com is a living text, updated every three months. Modifications may include:

• further revisions to definitions, pronunciation, etymology, headwords, variant spellings, quotations, and dates;
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Revisions and additions of this kind were last incorporated into biography, v. in March 2024.

Earlier versions of this entry were published in:

A Supplement to the New English Dictionary (1933)

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OED Second Edition (1989)

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• What is Biography?
• WhatDoesMean.net
• Miscellaneous

What Does Biography Mean

The biography is the story of life a person . The word comes from a compound Greek term: bios ( "life" ) and graphein ( "to write" ). Biography can be used in a symbolic sense. For example: "The president's biography reflects that she has never been in a similar situation . " In this case, the notion of biography refers to life history in general, without material support.

In the most common cases, however, a biography is a written narrative that summarizes the main events in a person's life. The literary genre in which these narratives are framed is also known as biography .

Biographies usually begin with the birth of the subject in question (usually a public and famous person) and can even go back to their family background (family tree, ancestors, etc.). Biographies whose protagonist has already died go up to the moment of his death, while, in the other cases, the author of the narration can choose how far to cover. As a literary genre, biography is narrative and expository . It appears written in the third person, with the exception of the autobiographies (where the protagonist is the one who narrates the actions). Although it may include subjective appreciations of the author and data on the context in which the protagonist's life takes place, the basis of the biography is the exact and precise data, such as dates, names and places. The basic structure of a biography includes the introduction (a presentation of the character), the development (the narration of the important events of his life) and the conclusion (this is the most subjective segment, with an assessment of the significance of the character). Today there are many Internet pages that offer a database with various biographies, in this way anyone who wants to know information about the history of an individual can easily access it. How to write a biography? At first glance, writing a biography may seem like a simple task, however if you want to do a good job you need to take it extremely seriously and carefully analyze every detail that we are going to include, to avoid giving a false testimony. When deciding to write a biography, it must be clear about which person we are going to do it , and gather as much data as possible about her and her life, in order to offer a complete and homogeneous work. It must be taken into account that the purpose of this type of text is, above all, to make known what is fundamental in the life of a certain public person ; giving more importance to his professional work than to the circumstances of his private life and telling about his way of working and everything that may be relevant to understanding his work.

It is important to point out that there are some questions that can serve as props to collect the information; starting from the past of the individual until reaching his present, such as: who were his parents and what relationship did he have with them? When did you discover that you wanted to dedicate yourself to this activity and what were your first steps in the environment? and everything that can help us understand what led him to become the person we all know. If possible, it is advisable to interview, if the protagonist is not possible, someone who has been close to him, and gather all the data that can help us to write his story; It is often very useful to record interviews and write them down. Once you have all the information, it is advisable to organize all the content and ideas before beginning to translate them and to know how to discern from all that information which is really relevant and which can be discarded.

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Meaning of "biography" in the English dictionary

Pronunciation of biography, grammatical category of biography, what does biography mean in english.

Definition of biography in the English dictionary

The definition of biography in the dictionary is an account of a person's life by another. Other definition of biography is such accounts collectively.

WORDS THAT RHYME WITH BIOGRAPHY

Words that begin like biography, words that end like biography, synonyms and antonyms of biography in the english dictionary of synonyms, synonyms of «biography», words relating to «biography», translation of «biography» into 25 languages.

TRANSLATION OF BIOGRAPHY

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FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE TERM «BIOGRAPHY» OVER TIME

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What does Harvey Weinstein’s New York ruling mean for his California rape conviction?

Mogul’s lawyers say decision in New York will strengthen appeal in Los Angeles but victims confident guilty verdict will be upheld

Harvey Weinstein was already expected to spend the remainder of his life in prison for crimes in New York when a Los Angeles jury found him guilty of rape and sexual assault in 2022 and he was sentenced to an additional 16 years.

But on Thursday New York’s top court overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction for two sex crimes and found he should receive a new trial, and the California case has taken on even greater significance.

“Some thought the [Los Angeles] case to be superfluous,” said Elizabeth Fegan, a lawyer for some Weinstein accusers. “Now we realize how important it was.”

Weinstein’s attorneys have argued that his conviction in New York affected his case in Los Angeles, and the development Thursday has raised concerns about the impact the court’s ruling will have on his effort to appeal in California .

As attorneys for Weinstein celebrated the New York court’s ruling, they said they were optimistic it would bolster efforts to appeal against his rape conviction in Los Angeles.

During a press conference on Thursday, Arthur Aidala, Weinstein’s lawyer, who called the ruling a “great day for America”, suggested that the evidence for appeal was even stronger in California.

“A jury was told in California that he was convicted in another state for rape … Turns out he shouldn’t have been convicted, and it wasn’t a fair conviction,” said Jennifer Bonjean, Weinstein’s lawyer in California who is appealing his conviction. “It interfered with his presumption of innocence in a significant way in California.”

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office said it was saddened by the New York court’s decision, but that it was confident the California conviction would stand.

Weinstein, 72, had been serving a 23-year prison sentence after a criminal conviction in New York in 2020 for two sex crimes. In 2022, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of rape and sexual assault. The convictions were hailed as major victories in the #MeToo movement , which was galvanized by the mass of women who came forward with accusations against Weinstein.

The New York court of appeals ruled the judge who oversaw Weinstein’s 2020 trial unfairly allowed testimony against him from other women whose allegations were not part of the case.

“[Weinstein] was convicted by a jury for various sexual crimes against three named complainants and, on appeal, claims that he was judged, not on the conduct for which he was indicted, but on irrelevant, prejudicial, and untested allegations of prior bad acts,” the court stated in Thursday’s decision.

As for whether Weinstein will face another trial, prosecutors in New York said “we will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault”.

He will remain jailed in New York while he awaits his next trial, Aidala said. His conviction in California still stands but is under review by a state appeals court.

Weinstein’s lawyer Mark Werksman told the Los Angeles Times that he “faced the same fundamental unfairness in the Los Angeles case, where the judge let the jury hear about four uncharged allegations of sexual assault”.

“Harvey was subjected to a firehose of uncharged and incredible allegations which destroyed his right to a fair trial on the charges in the indictment. The case here should be reversed for the same reasons the New York case was reversed.”

Unlike New York, California law permits “propensity evidence in sexual assault cases subject to the judge’s discretion”, which allowed prosecutors to use evidence of Weinstein’s sexual assaults in other jurisdictions, the LA district attorney’s office said in a statement.

“Although we do not know what arguments the defense will raise on appeal, we are confident that our convictions will withstand appellate scrutiny. Our office stands ready to see that Mr Weinstein faces the serious consequences of his deplorable conduct.”

Legal analysts have said that Weinstein faces a difficult path to getting his conviction in California overturned.

“Harvey Weinstein’s appeal of his Los Angeles conviction faces an uphill battle. A California law passed nearly 30 years ago allows prosecutors to bring in evidence that a sex crime defendant has engaged in prior sexual misconduct. This law has held up on appeal,” said V James DeSimone, a Los Angeles civil rights attorney.

California laws are much more permissive and accepting of prior bad acts and uncharged crime evidence, said Adanté Pointer, an Oakland-based civil rights attorney.

“Most such appeals go down in flames, however, given the wealth and power of this defendant, I am sure he is mounting the best defense money can buy,” he said. “That does not necessarily mean he wins on appeal, but it does certainly mean he will throw the best legal minds at trying to squeeze his appeal through the eye of this legal needle.”

The attorney David Ring, who represents Evgeniya Chernyshova – a Weinstein victim in Los Angeles, said his client was disappointed by the ruling but hopeful.

“Both she and I are confident that Weinstein’s Los Angeles conviction for rape will be upheld,” Ring said. “As the only victim who has now obtained a criminal conviction against Weinstein, she will continue to stand tall and do whatever necessary to obtain justice not only for herself but for all victims.”

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed

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14 Common Dream Interpretations and What They Actually Mean

By Audrey Noble

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Dreams can feel stunningly real, leave us shaken, and surprise us with their surreal storylines. But do they actually mean anything? Sigmund Freud, the famed neurologist and founder of modern-day psychoanalysis, had a lot to say about how we might interpret the visual, emotional, and cognitive sensations we experience while asleep. He believed our dreams are actually the disguised representations of our unconscious desires, thoughts, wishes, and motivations. It's a theory is still very much alive today.

“Throughout history, there has been both fascination and debate about what dreams are, what causes them, what they mean, and the benefit they may carry,” wellness astrologer and author of “ The Complete Book of Dreams ” Stephanie Gailing explains. “Since antiquity, they have maintained a very important role in cultures across the globe, revered for their visionary wisdom.”

The act of trying to suss out the possible meaning of dreams can be traced as far back as the ancient Sumerian civilization , when many people used them as prophetic guides and to help them make important decisions. According to Gailing, it wasn't until the early 20th century—and the birth of modern psychology —that dreams were seen as a reflection of the subconscious. Nowadays, it's common to interpret dreams in order to better understand our overall well-being.

Thea Gallagher, PsyD , clinical associate professor of psychiatry at NYU Langone Health, breaks down dreams, which typically occur in the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep stage where images or stories play out in our minds, into three types: a pleasant dream with an ideal outcome, one with a less preferred outcome (or oftentimes a bizarre one), and a nightmare. What these dreams mean is personal and can vary; it all depends on the dreamer.

“Dreams can show us things that we are experiencing in waking life but are not acknowledged in our conscious minds,” explains Gailing. “Either because we don’t have space to process them or we don’t want to deal with certain feelings or thoughts.”

Though the interpretation of dreams will be different for everyone, there are universal themes that pop up and are worth looking into if you're trying to figure out what you're own dreams might mean. Consider this your crash course in basic dream analysis—or, a handy little dream dictionary, just for you. Read on for 14 of the most common types of dreams and what they could mean for you.

Dreams of Being Pregnant

Depending on what is going on in your life, being pregnant in a dream can mean totally different things. Gailing says it’s important to look at the details of your dream to help flesh out the overall meaning. You’ll also want to explore how you’re feeling after the dream; she says your emotional reaction can provide insights into what the dream might mean to you personally.

“For example, if you have a dream about being pregnant, and you have been working hard on a creative project, the dream may relate to this period of creativity you are experiencing and how you feel about it,” she explains. “It’s always important to take the dream into context of what is happening in a person’s waking life.”

Dreams of Falling

If you’re dreaming about being in a free fall, Gailing says it could mean that you feel out of control and don’t “have steady footing” in some aspect of your life. On the other end of that spectrum, however, she says that if you find yourself falling in a dream but then start flying, it could represent freedom and trusting the timing of your life.

Dreams of Being Chased

Someone chasing you in your dreams is another sign that you might not feel in control. Gailing says it could signify a couple of different fears, such as concern that someone is out to get you or that you’re avoiding certain responsibilities.

Dreams of Flying

Whether you’re dreaming of flying like a bird or cos-playing your favorite Marvel superhero , Gailing says that the vivid dream of flying symbolizes freedom and a need for adventure. However if the dream turns into you falling as you fly, it could also mean you feel ungrounded. So remember to try to pay attention to what’s going on in the dream and how you feel.

Dreams of Death

An obvious reading, Gailing says, of dreaming about death is that it could signify your internal fear about dying. But here’s another way she says that you can look at it: it could just be giving you a sense that a chapter or situation in your life is coming to an end—and that doesn’t always have to be a bad thing.

Dreams of Your Teeth Falling Out

One of the most common dreams people tend to have is one that involves teeth falling out. Gailing says that there are three main dream interpretations for this. First, it could signify some sort of rebirth and transformation, as you’re releasing something old and making space for something new. The other two are more introspective and could signify feeling some sort of loss of control or internal concerns about how you present in public.

Dreams of Being Late or Missing a Deadline

These habits of tardiness showing up in your dreams usually shows some sort of worry you have internally. Gailing says that it could represent worrying about a lost opportunity or stress around your relationship with time. It could also show that you’re overwhelmed by being overcommitted with responsibilities.

Dreams of Being Naked in Public

Have you recently fallen flat on your face while walking through a crowd? Or accidentally liked an old photo of an ex while on a social media (read: stalking) deep dive? If you’re not one to brush it off and keep it moving, those embarrassed feelings may manifest in dreamland as you sleep. If you find yourself dreaming about being naked in public, Gailing says it’s most likely connected to a recent embarrassing situation you’ve found yourself in.

Dreams of Infidelity

The good news: dreaming of infidelity isn’t necessarily a sign from the universe that you’re with the wrong person or that you’re tapping into some psychic ability to predict the demise of your current relationship. The bad news: you might be dealing with trust issues in general and operating from a place of fear. Both Gallagher and Gailing say that if you’re not feeling secure or have been betrayed in the past , it’s normal to have those subconscious feelings of distrust creep up. Maybe you’re having this dream because a partner has cheated on you in the past or you’re scared something will ruin a beautiful current connection. Just remember, it’s important to ground yourself rather than lash out over this particular dream.

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“Relationships are one [thing] that can conjure up a lot of uncertainty because we don’t know…there’s so many things that could happen in a relationship,” says Gallagher. “I think if it’s really something that has no evidence based in the present, it’s about saying ‘I got to live my life’ and engage with this without knowing every possible outcome.”

Dreams of Phobias

No one wants to see insects, snakes, or any sort of creature they’re afraid of while they’re sleeping. So why is your unconscious mind doing you dirty in your dreams? Gailing says that if you’re dreaming of your phobias, you’re most likely afraid of not having control in some situation in your life. “[You’re] face to face with something that haunts or scares you,” she says.

She adds that certain animals and what those animals are doing represent different types of fears. For example, a snake in your dream shedding its skin could mean you are going through a transformation or releasing an old version of yourself that no longer suits your current timeline. A rat, on the other hand, could reflect that you’re hiding or shunning something.

Dreams of Your Ex

Don’t let the TikTok tarot cards fool you: a dream about your ex isn’t their way of manifesting you back into their lives. So before you undo all that healing by breaking the “no contact rule,” both Gailing and Thea want you to take a step back and evaluate your feelings surrounding that dream. “Were you thrilled, horrified, or puzzled that your ex starred in your dream? Also, what’s your relationship with your ex? Do you never want to see them again [or] do you pine for them? Do you regret or feel shame that you broke up ? The context is super important here in understanding what the dream is revealing,” says Gailing.

Once you process your feelings about the dream (and your ex), you can then determine whether or not you're harboring any unresolved emotions about the relationship. Gallagher says it’s normal to think about people in your past who you’ve had a significant relationship with, but it doesn’t always have to a deeper meaning about the specific person. “What do you want to do about [the dream]?” asks Gallagher. “Sometimes people struggle with ‘I regret that I broke up with this person’ or ‘I feel sadness that they cheated on me.’ [They also think], ‘I just feel like it was the wrong time, wrong place, and what could have been.’ I think processing those feelings is really important with our relationships.”

Dreams that Feel Like a Premonition

Better known as precognitive dreams, Gailing says, “These are the ones in which you dream of an event that has yet to occur, only for it to happen later. Some people [believe] that they are able to foretell the future through their dreams while others don’t sense that their dreams are precognitive until after an event that they dreamed about occurs.”

But not every dream is a precognitive dream and you shouldn’t live in fear thinking you’ve predicted your future every time you sleep. Instead, she says to just take note of times when your dreams come into fruition and  “Embrace the power of [your] intuition and ability to hone in on subtle perceptions of awareness,” she says. In other words, this is a great way to “further develop this skill.”

Gallagher agrees and says to have fun with it. “It doesn’t have to be that serious or deep,” she says. “I think [it] could be something that’s kind of neat and fun. [It could] sometimes make us feel connected to a greater sense of our consciousness.”

Dreams of Seeing a Loved One Who Has Passed Away

When Gallagher’s sister passed and visited her in a dream, Gallagher says she focused on the fact that it gave her a chance to create another memory with a person she misses dearly instead of trying to figure out whether her sister was sending her a message from the great beyond. This is something she encourages others to do as well. “Sometimes it's really nice to have that experience where you maybe connect with someone you've lost in a dream,” she says. “It was such a beautiful experience to have this kind of dream with my sister in it.”

If you’re feeling anxious or stressed after being visited by a lost loved one in your dreams, Gallagher recommends working through those feelings with a trusted friend, family member, or therapist. It might prove to be a meaningful moment of reflection and insight. “Dreams reflect things in our lives that are very much connected to strong emotions; it's no surprise that sometimes those will show up in our dreams,” she says. “I think that can be a beautiful thing.”

While not pleasant, nightmares can clue you in to any unresolved emotional conflicts that you might be carrying around. “[They] shine a light on what it is you are fearful of,” says Gailing. “They give us the opportunity to process unprocessed feelings.”

For the most part, you don’t have to be too concerned with having a nightmare. But Gallagher says that if you’re having recurring dreams of a traumatic event that has happened to you, you should seek out professional help to work through it. “It’s a clinical symptom,” she explains. “[A recurring nightmare about a traumatic event] could be indicating that you have some ‘unfinished business’ that you have to process, which is really important in healing from PTSD.”

If it’s a nightmare that you’re scared will come true, she says it’s normal to feel a bit uneasy. But she encourages you to speak with someone so that the fears don't affect how you live out your personal life.

Both Gailing and Gallagher encourage those interested in interpreting their own dreams to keep a dream journal ; this will help recall the dreams and make sense of what they might mean to you in the present moment. It might just prove to be emotionally helpful, as well. “A dream journal offers you a deeper level of understanding about yourself and/or the world around you,” explains Gailing. “Even if a dream is full of fancy or nothing more than a recounting of the day’s events…I think that opening up to our dreams can leave us in awe and inspire us to feel more awe at the complexity and mystery of life.”

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Bird Flu Is Infecting More Mammals. What Does That Mean for Us?

H5N1, an avian flu virus, has killed tens of thousands of marine mammals, and infiltrated American livestock for the first time. Scientists are working quickly to assess how it is evolving and how much of a risk it poses to humans.

Checking a dead otter for bird flu infection last year on Chepeconde Beach in Peru. Credit... Sebastian Castaneda/Reuters

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By Apoorva Mandavilli and Emily Anthes

Apoorva Mandavilli first reported on bird flu in 2003. Emily Anthes has been writing about bird flu in wild animals since 2022.

• Published April 22, 2024 Updated April 24, 2024

In her three decades of working with elephant seals, Dr. Marcela Uhart had never seen anything like the scene on the beaches of Argentina’s Valdés Peninsula last October.

It was peak breeding season; the beach should have been teeming with harems of fertile females and enormous males battling one another for dominance. Instead, it was “just carcass upon carcass upon carcass,” recalled Dr. Uhart, who directs the Latin American wildlife health program at the University of California, Davis.

H5N1, one of the many viruses that cause bird flu, had already killed at least 24,000 South American sea lions along the continent’s coasts in less than a year. Now it had come for elephant seals.

Pups of all ages, from newborns to the fully weaned, lay dead or dying at the high-tide line. Sick pups lay listless, foam oozing from their mouths and noses.

Dr. Uhart called it “an image from hell.”

In the weeks that followed, she and a colleague — protected head to toe with gloves, gowns and masks, and periodically dousing themselves with bleach — carefully documented the devastation. Team members stood atop the nearby cliffs, assessing the toll with drones.

What they found was staggering: The virus had killed an estimated 17,400 seal pups , more than 95 percent of the colony’s young animals.

The catastrophe was the latest in a bird flu epidemic that has whipped around the world since 2020, prompting authorities on multiple continents to kill poultry and other birds by the millions. In the United States alone, more than 90 million birds have been culled in a futile attempt to deter the virus.

There has been no stopping H5N1. Avian flu viruses tend to be picky about their hosts, typically sticking to one kind of wild bird. But this one has rapidly infiltrated an astonishingly wide array of birds and animals, from squirrels and skunks to bottlenose dolphins, polar bears and, most recently, dairy cows.

“In my flu career, we have not seen a virus that expands its host range quite like this,” said Troy Sutton, a virologist who studies avian and human influenza viruses at Penn State University.

Newfoundland

St. John’s

South Carolina

St. Lawrence

Maine coast

Falkland Islands

South Georgia

Dec. 2021 The H5N1 bird flu virus is detected on a farm in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and in a sick wild gull nearby. Hundreds of birds on the farm died, and the rest were culled. It is the first detection of the virus in North America.

Migrating shorebirds may have carried the virus from Europe to Newfoundland through Iceland or Greenland. Or seabirds that congregate in the north Atlantic Ocean might have carried the virus ashore when they returned to Newfoundland to breed.

Jan. 2022 The virus is first detected in the United States, in wild birds in North and South Carolina.

Summer 2022 Hundreds of harbor seals and gray seals die along the coast of Maine and along the St. Lawrence Estuary in Quebec. The seals may have been infected by living near or eating sick and dead birds.

Fall 2022 After months moving west across the United States and Canada, the virus spreads south into Mexico and Colombia , most likely by migrating birds carrying it down the Pacific Flyway.

Nov. 2022 The virus reaches Peru, causes a mass die-off of pelicans along the coast, and begins to spread to other birds and marine mammals. Confirmed samples are shown as dots.

Early 2023 Thousands of sea lions die in Peru and Chile, the earliest known mass sea lion deaths from the virus. The virus continues spreading down the Chilean coast towards Cape Horn.

Late 2023 The virus rounds Cape Horn and moves north into Argentina and Uruguay, killing sea lions and seals and eventually reaching southern Brazil.

Oct. 2023 The virus also spreads south , entering the Antarctic region for the first time. Birds on the island of South Georgia are infected, followed in January by elephant seals and fur seals . Seabirds on the Falklands Islands are also infected.

The blow to sea mammals, and to dairy and poultry industries, is worrying enough. But a bigger concern, experts said, is what these developments portend: The virus is adapting to mammals, edging closer to spreading among people.

A human pandemic is by no means inevitable. So far at least, the changes in the virus do not signal that H5N1 can cause a pandemic, Dr. Sutton said.

Still, he said, “We really don’t know how to interpret this or what it means.”

Marine mortalities

A highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 was identified in 1996 in domestic waterfowl in China. The next year, 18 people in Hong Kong became infected with the virus, and six died. The virus then went silent, but it resurfaced in Hong Kong in 2003. Since then, it has caused dozens of outbreaks in poultry and affected more than 800 people who were in close contact with the birds.

All the while, it continued to evolve.

The version of H5N1 currently racing across the world emerged in Europe in 2020 and spread quickly to Africa and Asia. It killed scores of farmed birds, but unlike its predecessors it also spread widely among wild birds and into many other animals.

Most infections of mammals were probably “dead-end” cases: a fox, perhaps, that ate an infected bird and died without passing on the virus. But a few larger outbreaks suggested that H5N1 was capable of more.

The first clue came in the summer of 2022, when the virus killed hundreds of seals in New England and Quebec . A few months later, it infiltrated a mink farm in Spain .

In the mink, at least, the most likely explanation was that H5N1 had adapted to spread among the animals. The scale of the outbreaks in sea mammals in South America underscored that probability.

“Even intuitively, I would think that mammal-to-mammal transmission is very likely,” said Malik Peiris, a virologist and expert in bird flu at the University of Hong Kong.

After it was first detected in South America, in birds in Colombia in October 2022, the virus swept down the Pacific coast to Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of the continent, and up the Atlantic coast.

Along the way, it killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds, and tens of thousands of sea lions, in Peru , Chile , Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. The sea lions behaved erratically, experiencing convulsions and paralysis; pregnant females miscarried their fetuses .

“What happened when the virus moved to South America we had never seen before,” Dr. Uhart said.

Exactly how and when the virus jumped to marine mammals is unclear, but the sea lions most likely came into close contact with infected birds or contaminated droppings. (Although fish make up the bulk of sea lions’ diet, they do sometimes eat birds.)

At some point, it’s likely the virus evolved to spread directly among the marine mammals: In Argentina, the sea lion deaths did not coincide with the mass mortality of wild birds.

“This could suggest that the infection source was not the infected birds,” said Dr. Pablo Plaza, a wildlife veterinarian at the National University of Comahue and National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Argentina.

It is not hard to imagine how the virus might disperse in these animals: Elephant seals and sea lions both breed in colonies, crowding together on beaches where they fight, mate and bark at one another. Elephant seals sneeze all day, dispersing large droplets of mucus each time they do.

It is difficult to prove exactly how and when the virus moved from one species to another. But genetic analysis supports the theory the marine mammals acquired their infections from one another, not birds. Samples of virus isolated from sea lions in Peru and Chile and from the elephant seals in Argentina all share about 15 mutations not seen in the birds; the same mutations were also present in a Chilean man who was infected last year.

There are numerous opportunities for H5N1 to jump from sea mammals into people. One sick male elephant seal that sat for a day and a half on a public beach in Argentina turned out to carry enormous amounts of virus. In Peru, scientists collected samples from sea lion carcasses that lay alongside families enjoying a beach day.

Scavenging animals, such as dogs, could also pick up the virus from an infected carcass and then spread it more broadly: “None of the wildlife exists in their little silos,” said Wendy Puryear, a virologist at Tufts University who studied the New England seal outbreaks.

In some South American countries, apart from a few carcasses that were buried, the rest have remained on the beaches, rotting and scavenged upon.

“How do you even scale up to remove 17,000 dead bodies out in the middle of nowhere, places where you can’t even bring down machinery, and humongous cliffs?” Dr. Uhart said.

A mutating pathogen

Flu viruses are adept at picking up new mutations; when two types of flu virus infect the same animal, they can shuffle their genetic material and generate new versions.

It is unclear exactly how, and how much, the H5N1 virus has changed since it first emerged. One study last year showed that after the virus entered the United States, it quickly mixed with other flu viruses circulating here and morphed into various versions — some mild, others causing severe neurological symptoms.

“So now after 20 years of reassortment, you have a virus that actually does extraordinary well in a whole variety of avian and mammal species,” said Vincent Munster, a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has studied the mutations needed for H5N1 to adapt to people.

Every new species that harbors the virus creates opportunities for H5N1 to continue to evolve, and to jump into people.

And the virus may stumble across mutations that no one has yet considered, allowing it to breach the species barrier. That is what happened in the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

That virus did not have the mutations thought to be needed to infect people easily. Instead, “it had these other mutations that no one knew about or thought about before then,” said Louise Moncla, an evolutionary biologist who studies avian influenza at the University of Pennsylvania.

Still, even if the virus jumps to people, “we may not see the level of mortality that we’re really concerned about,” said Seema Lakdawala, a virologist at Emory University. “Preexisting immunity to seasonal flu strains will provide some protection from severe disease.”

What happens next

The U.S. is prepared for an influenza pandemic, with some stockpiled vaccines and antivirals, but its efforts at monitoring the virus may not pick it up quickly enough to deploy those tools.

It took several weeks before farmers, and then officials, knew that H5N1 was circulating in dairy cows.

The dairy farm outbreak has resulted in only one mild human infection, but farms are fertile ground for the virus to jump species — from cat to cow to pig and human, in any order.

Many scientists worry in particular about pigs, which are susceptible to both human and avian flu strains, providing the perfect mixing bowl for viruses to swap genes. Pigs are slaughtered when very young, and newer generations, with no prior exposure to flu, are particularly vulnerable to infections.

So far, H5N1 does not seem adept at infecting pigs, but that could change as it acquires new mutations.

“I never let my kids go to a state fair or animal farm, I’m one of those parents,” Dr. Lakdawala said. “And it’s mostly because I know that the number of interactions that we increase with animals, the more opportunities there are.”

Should H5N1 adapt to people, federal officials will need to work together and with their international counterparts. Nationalism, competition and bureaucracy can all slow down the exchange of information that is crucial in a developing outbreak.

In some ways, the current spread among dairy cows is an opportunity to practice the drill, said Rick Bright, the chief executive of Bright Global Health, a consulting company that focuses on improving responses to public health emergencies. But the U.S. Agriculture Department has been too limited in its approach to testing cows, and has not been as timely and transparent with its findings as it should have been, he said.

On Wednesday, the department ordered that dairy cows moving across state lines to be tested for influenza.

Dr. Rosemary Sifford, the department’s chief veterinarian, said the staff there were working hard to share information as quickly as they can. “This is considered an emerging disease,” she said.

Government leaders are typically cautious, wanting to see more data. But “given the rapid speed at which this can spread and the devastating illness that it can cause if our leaders are hesitant and don’t pull the right triggers at the right time, we will be caught flat-footed once again,” Dr. Bright said.

“If we don’t give it the panic but we give it the respect and due diligence,” he added, alluding to the virus, “I believe we can manage it.”

Apoorva Mandavilli is a reporter focused on science and global health. She was a part of the team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the pandemic. More about Apoorva Mandavilli

Emily Anthes is a science reporter, writing primarily about animal health and science. She also covered the coronavirus pandemic. More about Emily Anthes

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What does 'Sapphic' mean? An ancient term is having a modern moment

When people look at images captured by Ty Busey, the photographer says she wants them to know that the pictures and films were captured by a queer woman. Drawing on Renaissance paintings as inspiration, Busey poses her subjects, who are LGBTQ women and nonbinary people, with halos and textured backgrounds in lounging postures. She describes her artistic eye in one word: “Sapphic.”

The term derives from Sappho, a lyrical poet who lived in ancient Greece and created verses about pursuing women lovers that were rich in sensuality and nostalgia — and even libertine at times.

The style of Busey’s work is a fitting way to rectify its namesake’s historical legacy. In the hundreds of years after her death around 570 B.C.E., Sappho was often portrayed in art as heterosexual when her own poetry said otherwise.

When asked what she hopes viewers take away from her visuals, Busey said, “I want the person watching the video to be like, ‘Yes, this is what it feels like to be with a woman.’”

Busey, a Maryland resident who has identified as a lesbian since she was a teenager, first learned about the label “Sapphic” on TikTok in 2021. In the years since she’s embraced the term, it has abounded, appearing on social media meme pages , as a literary genre , as a descriptor for events in brick and mortar spaces and even as a noun for self-identification.

Over two-and-a-half millennia removed from its namesake, the term Sapphic does not have a precise definition that’s agreed upon by all of those who currently embrace it. However, its current use is generally as an umbrella term for lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals and other women-loving women, and for transgender and nonbinary people who may not identify as women themselves but align with this spectrum of attraction and community. 

While Sapphic may evoke ancient images of romance, it has a lesser-known political undercurrent: The poet Sappho resisted tyranny in her own era by the military general Pittacus, making her a potent queer symbol during a tenuous time for LGBTQ rights.

A rebirth on the internet

Describing herself as “chronically online,” Tyler Mead, 28, said she learned about the term Sapphic “funnily enough, actually, on the internet.”

As a singer, songwriter and producer under the moniker STORYBOARDS , she came across queer artists like Fletcher using the term. 

“It got me intrigued, and I was like, ‘What does this term mean? What does this mean to them? And, what could it also mean for me?’ Because it’s been a bit of a journey for me of coming out in multiple layers,” Mead said.

In 2018, Mead came out as pansexual, then in 2020 as a trans woman. For the past year, she’s identified as a lesbian and as Sapphic, which she said captures a philosophy of “softness” in her approach to romance and dating. 

“An interesting part of being a trans woman who is Sapphic is that, even before I started transitioning, I always knew that I was attracted to women … but not in a straight way,” Mead, who lives in Los Angeles, said.

The expansiveness of the term, she explained, is a strong draw, adding that she knows people who are trans masculine that use it. 

A songwriter since middle school, Mead not only considers her music Sapphic but sums up her entire “energy” on the bio section of her TikTok profile as: “Sapphic fairy.”

Related stories:

• A lesbian archive inside a Brooklyn brownstone has documented decades of Sapphic history
• Billie Eilish, Reneé Rapp, Phoebe Bridgers: Queer women finally get their due in music
• 10 trailblazing queer women to celebrate

The word “Sappho” appears to have first emerged digitally in 1987 on an early iteration of an email list, according to Avery Dame-Griff, curator of the Queer Digital History Project . 

The Greek poet, it seems, was the namesake of an English language mailing list for LGBTQ women during a time when email would have only been accessible to those in academic or computer-related fields, according to Dame-Griff. 

A name like Sappho, he explained, would have signaled that the mailing list was for queer women without using a term like “gay” or “lesbian,” which would have drawn unwanted attention. 

Since 2004, the first year for which Google Trends provides search data , the term “Sapphic” peaked in December 2005 before steadily declining for the next 15 years. Since 2020, however, it has been on a steady upward trajectory. 

Perhaps nowhere is the term currently more prominent than social media, where Sappho-themed meme accounts —  Sappho Was Here , Suffering Sappho Memes and Sapphic Sandwich , just to name a few — have amassed tens of thousands of followers on Instagram. And, on TikTok, a wildly popular social media platform among those in the 18-29 demo , the term has been hashtagged over 340,000 times.

Some of those hashtags lead to 26-year-old New Yorker Nina Haines. During the pandemic, Haines said, she was craving queer community. Unable to see LGBTQ friends in person because of Covid, she started posting about Sapphic literature on TikTok in an effort to find connection.

Then, in 2021, Haines founded Sapph-Lit , a book club that today boasts 8,200 members from over 60 countries, with members who identify as queer women and nonbinary people. Her book picks have included modern romances, like Casey McQuiston’s “I Kissed Shara Wheeler,” and classics like Audre Lorde’s “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name.”

“At the end of the day, we really want to prioritize Sapphic literature, because Sapphics have been historically rendered invisible throughout history,” she said. 

For Haines, who has a tattoo of Sappho on her arm, the term Sapphic “captures the women-loving-women experience” in a way that is “rooted in history” and that signals “that we have always been here.”

A historical legacy 

Hailing from the Greek island of Lesbos and living from roughly 630 B.C.E. to 570 B.C.E., what is known of Sappho’s life comes from surviving fragments of her poetry and what was written about her by other ancients, according to Page duBois, the author of 1995’s “ Sappho Is Burning ” and a professor of classics and comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Sappho’s queer legacy, duBois added, emerges from an expression of romantic and sexual desire toward women in her poems, often with a tint of nostalgia.

“They are really lovely and project that kind of world of voluptuous, flower filled, scented eros [desire] directed toward women,” duBois said.

But a passive “pink, romantic Valentine” she was not. “An aggressive pursuer of her lover,” Sappho described intimate memories of a far away, beloved woman, according to duBois. 

“She talks about anointing her with beautiful ointments and putting garlands on her, and satisfying each other on soft beds,” duBois said of Fragment 94 of Sappho’s poetry.

There are contradictory interpretations that Sappho was a schoolteacher, an aristocrat or a hetaira (a sex worker who operated like a courtesan or geisha), and that she was perhaps enslaved. In the Middle Ages and Victorian periods, she was presented as heterosexual in art, portrayed as a forlorn woman who threw herself off a cliff after she was rejected by a ferryman she loved.

Finding a new generation

For the past 100 years, an ever-evolving lexicon — and a debate about the best terms to use — has been a consistent feature of LGBTQ culture. 

As far back as the 1920s, there are examples of “Sapphic” being used to advertise sexual entertainment, like sex shows, performed by women for a male audience. The term Sapphic can also be found in 1930s tabloid headlines , and several lesbian publications in the ‘70s and ‘80s incorporated the word Sappho in their names .

It became more common for women to identify as a “lesbian” in the 1960s, though there were earlier exceptions, according to Cookie Woolner, author of “ The Famous Lady Lovers: Black Women and Queer Desire Before Stonewall .”

Of course, butch, femme, dyke, stud and a host of other terms have been embraced by queer women, each shaped by the communities that created them and the social movements of their time. 

“Maybe in some ways, the terms are changing because it’s about a break from a past generation,” said Woolner, an associate professor of history at the University of Memphis.

Though Woolner and others have noted that there are those who eschew certain terms or identifiers, for one reason or another. Some LGBTQ women, for example, don’t identify with “Sapphic” due to a perceived chasteness and the ancient aura.

For the past three years, Busey has organized a “Sapphic picnic” outside of Washington, D.C. For this year, Busey chose the theme “For the Gods,” an ode to Greek gods and goddesses and conducted a photo shoot to match. 

“There’s something about those ancient photos and the way that they’re all falling on each other — I really love them so much,” she said. “I just want to recapture it specifically with women, especially if I could put a Black woman in there.”

More than 2,500 years after Sappho walked the earth, champions of the term Sapphic see the parallels between finding their own power and the erasure and subsequent embrace of the lyrical poet’s queer identity.

“I see her as this reclamation,” Haines said of Sappho. “As this statement of, ‘No, I actually mean the words that I say, and don’t twist them.’”

For more from NBC Out, sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Alex Berg is a freelance on-air host and journalist based in New York City.

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What does the possible TikTok ban mean for US-China relations?

TikTok has said it will challenge new US legislation requiring its parent company to sell it under threat of a ban in court.

The law signed this week by US President Joe Biden states that TikTok's Chinese-based parent company ByteDance has 270 days with a possible 90-day extension to divest from the app or face a ban.

"This unconstitutional law is a TikTok ban, and we will challenge it in court. We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail," TikTok said in a statement earlier this week.

Should a legal challenge fail, observers say Chinese authorities are unlikely to allow a sale, a move that could be seen as surrendering to Washington.

Beijing may not want the US action against the popular short-form video platform to set a “bad precedent,” said Alex Capri, a senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore and research fellow at Hinrich Foundation.

“If Beijing capitulates to the US, where does it end?”

TikTok suspends rewards in Lite app in the wake of EU probe

'No plan to sell TikTok'

ByteDance said on a Chinese news app it owns that it "doesn't have any plan to sell TikTok".

Hu Xijin, a former editor-in-chief for the Chinese party-run newspaper Global Times and now a political commentator, said that with 170 million American users, TikTok should "have more guts to fight to the very end and refuse to surrender".

The fight over TikTok has increased tensions between the US and China, with both vowing to protect their interests.

US lawmakers have said that ByteDance's ownership of TikTok is a national security threat, with its algorithm manipulating what US users see.

They have said they are trying to prevent "foreign adversary espionage".

The law followed a string of successes by Washington in curbing the influence of Chinese companies through bans, export controls and forced divestitures, drawing protests from Beijing that the US is bent on suppressing China’s rise through economic coercion.

The US previously forced Beijing Kunlun, a Chinese mobile video game company, to sell the gay dating app Grindr after receiving a federal order.

But TikTok, which was created for the overseas market, is a case Beijing does not want to lose.

TikTok and YouTube Shorts push misogynistic videos to young male watchers, study finds

Financial interests might not prevail

National dignity is at stake and could "take precedence over the financial interests of ByteDance investors," including global investors who own 60 per cent of the company, said Gabriel Wildau, managing director of the consulting and advisory firm Teneo.

A legal challenge from the company is expected to lean on First Amendment concerns and could drag on for years. Beijing is betting on a legal win, analysts say.

What to do if TikTok doesn't prevail is likely still being debated with the Chinese leadership, said Dominic Chiu, an analyst with Eurasia Group.

President Xi Jinping, who will have to sign off on whether to permit or prohibit the sale, probably has not made the final decision, Chiu said.

Luckily for Xi, there is no urgency for Beijing to decide, said Sun Yun, director of the China programme at the Washington-based Stimson Center.

“A lot of things could change," she said.

If lawmakers get their wish and a sale does occur, it’s likely to be a challenging and messy process for TikTok, which would have to disentangle its US operations from everything else.

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Is Beyoncé coming to the second weekend of Coachella 2024? Here's what that ad might mean

During the first weekend of Coachella, it was an airplane banner. Now, during Weekend 2, it's a large semitruck parked on the grounds. Both were emblazoned with the words "Cowboy Carter," which any music fan knows is a reference to Beyoncé's new country album. 

The speculation continues to percolate. What does it mean? Is Queen B coming to the second weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival?

Here are some theories:

• It's simple marketing, reminding folks that Beyoncé came out with a new album and flooding an area where they know music fans exist with a reminder. But does Beyoncé need that kind of marketing help? Last time I checked, she's Beyoncé. 
• Could it mean that she will pop up with someone this weekend at Coachella, the home of her still-legendary 2018 headlining set? The airplane banner at Weekend 1 didn't result in any Beyoncé sightings, but a semitruck feels more permanent. Could she jump up with a friend? Or perhaps an established band like N o Doubt in the spot where Olivia Rodrigo surprised the audience last week. Beyoncé sent artist Victoria Monet a bouquet of flowers complimenting her on great first-weekend performance. Monet plays again this Sunday, so maybe just maybe there's a chance.
• It's a tease for what would be a more logical appearance next week at Stagecoach , the country Coachella. Beyoncé's new album has created a buzz in the country world and on the country charts. It only makes sense she would show up somehow with someone, maybe Post Malone or Willie Nelson. Even more likely is that she could jump up with one of her collaborators on the album. The beautiful song "Blackbiird" from the "Cowboy Carter" album features four other Black female county artists, two of which are performing at Stagecoach next weekend: Tanner Adell and Brittney Spencer. Another "Cowboy Carter" track called "Just For Fun" features Willie Jones, who is also performing at Stagecoach. 

Long story short, if Beyoncé doesn't show up in the desert at some point in the next 10 days, we'll be surprised.