bios
Pluralbioi
- 1Plural of bio.
The conference website lists short bios of every panelist.
She rewrote both of her online bios after changing jobs.
Note
A regular -s plural that covers both kinds of short life summary: the paragraph introducing a speaker or author, and the lines people write about themselves on a profile. The same spelling is also a singular noun twice over, in the old vitamin name and in Agamben's term for qualified life, so context decides whether bios means one thing or several.
- 2In Giorgio Agamben's philosophy, a particular or qualified mode of life, as distinct from bare life, or zoe.
The seminar spent a week on Agamben's opposition between bios and zoe.
In this reading, the refugee is stripped of bios and reduced to bare life.
Oppositezoe
Note
Borrowed straight from Ancient Greek bíos, the word keeps its Greek plural, bioi, rather than adding -s. Agamben sets it against zoe, the bare fact of being alive, so that bios names a life given a shape: a way of living rather than living itself. Far back, it is a doublet of English quick and of jiva.
- 3A substance once thought to be a single vitamin essential for the growth of yeast, later shown to be several B vitamins.
Without bios in the medium, the yeast cultures barely multiplied.
The chemists spent years trying to purify bios from plant extracts.
Note
A name from early vitamin research, dropped once the growth factor for yeast turned out to be several B vitamins rather than one. Readers meet it mainly in older scientific writing; a modern account would name the particular vitamins instead, and uses bios only when describing how the substance was first studied.
bios is a form of bio
bio, noun: A brief account that outlines the main facts of a person's life. Full entry
- Forms
- biobios plural
- Spelling
- bio → bios: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with bios, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.
Origin
From Ancient Greek βίος (bíos). It is a doublet of jiva and quick.