Diderot

American

[dee-duh-roh, deed^uh-roh] / ˈdi dəˌroʊ, didəˈroʊ /

noun

Denis 1713–84, French philosopher, critic, and encyclopedist.

Diderot British

/ ˈdiːdərəʊ, didro /

noun

Denis (dəni). 1713–84, French philosopher, noted particularly for his direction (1745–72) of the great French Encyclopédie

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Denis Diderot hoped that, in death, he would unite with his beloved as a flurry of molecules.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 2, 2026

The incident happened at a museum dedicated to French philosopher Denis Diderot in Landres, north-eastern France on Sunday night.

From BBC • Oct. 23, 2025

And in January, Millah Gilbert, a Diderot graduate, joined the team.

From New York Times • Oct. 20, 2022

By the middle of the eighteenth century, French scholars Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert felt ready to catalogue all human knowledge in their comprehensive, 30-volume Encyclopédie.

From Textbooks • Jan. 18, 2018

But Diderot had one great advantage over us: graduating from the Sorbonne in 1732, he had been educated in the world of Aristotelian philosophy.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023