Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

bibliography

UK/bɪbliˈɒɡɹəfi/US/bɪbliˈɒɡɹəfi/
nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,350 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: bibliographies

A bibliography is the list of all sources at the end of a paper. Compile a bibliography, a selected bibliography, check the bibliography.

It differs from a reference list: a bibliography includes everything consulted and a reference list only what was cited, and which is wanted depends on the style guide. It is also a whole discipline — the study of books as physical objects. Note that the Greek means book writing.

Dr. Marcus Gossler~commonswiki · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of bibliography

  1. 1nounbibliographyThe list of all sources at the end of a paper.B2+

    “Don't forget to include every book you used in the bibliography at the end of your essay.”

bibliography is a list of sources.

Also accepted in games: references

Where it comes from

Greek bibliographia is biblion, a book, plus graphein, to write. Bible and graph come from the two halves.

  1. Ancient Greek

    βιβλιογραφία — the act or habit of writing books

  2. English, today

    bibliography

Built from

  • βιβλιογράφος · Ancient Greek — a writer of books
  • βιβλίον · Ancient Greek — small book
  • γράφω · Ancient Greek — I write

From Ancient Greek βιβλιογραφία (“the act or habit of writing books”), from βιβλιογράφος (“a writer of books”), from βιβλίον (“small book”) + γράφω (“I write”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Academic English, Libraries & Museums

Practise this word

bibliography in the wild

  • The other sense is "the study of books as physical objects" and "the systematic description of books as objects" (descriptive bibliography).

    Bibliography

  • The first sense is a countable noun, as in "a bibliography", while the second refers to the mass noun "bibliography" as a general concept.

    Bibliography

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.