memoir

Memoir ends in -oir, one of the most reliable French spellings in English, alongside repertoire, reservoir and boudoir. It came in during the early 1400s from Anglo-French memorie, "a note, a memorandum, something written to be kept in mind," from Latin memoria, from a root meaning "to remember."

The narrowing is worth following. A memoir was first just a written record. In the 1600s it became a notice or essay about something within the writer's own knowledge — the sense still alive when scientists publish a memoir. The meaning everyone now knows, a person's written account of their own life, is from the 1670s. The Century Dictionary drew the fine distinction that a memoir is a less complete account than a biography, or else one the subject writes themselves — in which case, it insisted, the word should be plural: memoirs.

memoir
(n.)
early 15c., "written record," from Anglo-French
memorie
"note, memorandum, something written to be kept in mind" (early 15c., Old French
memoire
), from Latin
memoria
(from PIE root
*(s)mer-
(1) "to remember"). The more specific sense of "a notice or essay relating to something within the writer's own memory or knowledge" is from 17c. Meaning "person's written account of his or her life" is from 1670s. Related:
Memoirist
.
Biography
,
Memoir
. When there is a difference between these words, it may be that
memoir
indicates a less complete or minute account of a person's life, or it may be that the person himself records his own recollections of the past, especially as connected with his own life; in the latter case
memoir
should be in the plural. [Century Dictionary]
also from early 15c.

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