bio

Pluralbios

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A brief account that outlines the main facts of a person's life.

   The press kit included two photos and a one-page bio of the band's singer.

   The host read a quick bio of each guest before the panel began.

   Similarbiography, profile

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A short section of a user profile that gives information about the user, especially one the user can write and edit.

   Her Instagram bio describes her as a nurse, a runner, and a mother of three.

   Fans noticed that he had quietly removed the team's name from his bio.

   Note

   Platforms give the word its frame, as in an Instagram bio, and what it holds is said to be in it: a self-description, a job title, emoji that signal where someone stands. People write, edit and update their bios, and a quiet change there, such as dropping a team's name, is the kind of thing followers notice.

3. 3
   nounabbreviationclipping

   Short for biography.

   The senator's long-awaited bio finally reaches bookstores next month.

   Critics praised the new bio for drawing on letters the poet never meant to publish.

   Note

   The clipped form stretches as far as biography itself, so a new bio of a president on bookstore shelves is a full-length book, not a short life sketch; context alone separates the two. The plural is the regular bios, as in Henry Jenkins's Convergence Culture (2006), where fan sites trade pics, vidcaps, bios and descriptions.

4. 4
   nouncolloquialabbreviationclipping

   Short for biology.

   She switched her major from bio to computer science in her second year.

   Half the bio students signed up for the field trip to the wetlands.

   Note

   As the name of a school subject it takes no article, just like the full word: students take bio, hate bio, or switch out of bio. It also stands before other nouns, as in a bio exam or a bio class, and travels with other clipped sciences, as in bio and chem. In formal writing, biology is the better choice.

5. 5
   adjectivecolloquial

   Short for biological.

   The adoption agency helped her get in touch with her bio family.

   Use a bio detergent if you want stains to come out at lower temperatures.

   Similarbiological

   Note

   A clipping that sits before a noun and takes on whichever meaning of biological the noun calls for: a bio family is the one a person was born into, as distinct from an adoptive one, while a bio detergent or a bio food shop is about products, not parentage. It is informal and does not compare: nothing is more bio than something else.

6. 6
   nouncolloquialSouth Africaabbreviationclipping

   Short for bioscope, in the sense of a movie theater.

   On Saturday afternoons the whole family would head to the bio in town.

   They queued for over an hour at the bio to see the film on its opening night.

   Note

   South African speech clips bioscope to bio and puts the in front of it: going to the bio is going to the cinema. The full word names a cinema in India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia and their neighbors too, but the clipped form belongs to South Africa, and it keeps only the cinema meaning, never the early film projector.

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