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autograph

nounadjectiveverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈɔːtəɡɹɑːf//
  • United States//ˈɔtəɡɹæf//
  • United States/[ˈɔɾəɡɹæf]/
  • //ˈɑtəɡɹæf//
  • /[ˈɑɾəɡɹæf]/

A person’s own handwriting, especially the signature of a famous or admired person.

noun

  1. 1

    A person’s own handwriting, especially the signature of a famous or admired person.

    Some autograph-hunters were pestering the players after the game.

  2. 2

    A person's signature used as a mark of formal approval.

    If you could just put your autograph on the ol’ contract, please…

    For me, identifying an autograph is one of the most exciting aspects of collecting. I enjoy the detective work that comes with discerning a fake from the real deal, and subsequently valuing the item against other examples.

    “Based on the scarcity of signed images from this period, in general, coupled with the miniscule population of original Jackson autographs we cannot overstate the rarity of this offering,” it said.

  3. 3

    A manuscript in the author’s handwriting; a handwritten copy.

    An autograph of this text, made by E. Weidner, will be reproduced as plate XVII.

Etymology

From Latin autographum, in turn from Ancient Greek αὐτόγραφον (autógraphon, “a writing in one’s own hand”). Equivalent to auto- + -graph.

adjective

  1. 1

    Written in the author’s own handwriting.

  2. 2

    Made by the artist himself or herself; authentic.

    Schiff […] believes most of the drawings are autograph.

    Not surprisingly, he attributed to Kauffman two important works that are no longer accepted as autograph.

verb

  1. 1

    To sign, or write one’s name or signature on a book, etc.

    Diego Maradona is helping in the fight against coronavirus in his home city by autographing a replica of the Argentina jersey he wore in the country’s 1986 World Cup final triumph to raise money for an underprivileged community.

  2. 2

    To write something in one's own handwriting.

Forms

plural
autographs
past tense
autographed
past participle
autographed
present participle
autographing
third person singular
autographs
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).