Durkheim

American  

[durk-hahym, dyr-kem] / ˈdɜrk haɪm, dürˈkɛm /

noun

1. Émile 1858–1917, French sociologist and philosopher.

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Durkheim British  

/ ˈdɜːkhaɪm, dyrkɛm /

noun

1. Émile (emil). 1858–1917, French sociologist, whose pioneering works include De la Division du travail social (1893)

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Example Sentences

“For Durkheim, the content of religion was society; for Simmel, the form of religion was society,” Mr. Appiah writes.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 31, 2025

Durkheim suggested that most of us spend the majority of our lives doing menial tasks — hunting and gathering or typing and chattering.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 28, 2023

This term was coined a century ago to describe a root cause of “the elementary forms of the religious life,” in a book of that name by French sociologist Emile Durkheim.

From Washington Post • Apr. 6, 2023

Graeber and Wengrow, by contrast, write in the grand tradition of social theory descended from Weber, Durkheim and Levi-Strauss.

From New York Times • Oct. 31, 2021

From a contemplation of all this diversity Professor Durkheim emerges, demanding a "synthetic science," "certain synthetic conceptions"—and Professor Karl Pearson endorses the demand—to fuse all these various activities into something that will live and grow.

From An Englishman Looks at the World by Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)