Molière

American  

[mohl-yair, maw-lyer] / moʊlˈyɛər, mɔˈlyɛr /

noun

1. Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622–73, French actor and playwright.

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Molière British  

/ mɔljɛr /

noun

1. real name Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. 1622–73, French dramatist, regarded as the greatest French writer of comedy. His works include Tartuffe (1664), Le Misanthrope (1666), L'Avare (1668), Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670), and Le Malade imaginaire (1673)

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Molière Cultural  

1. Nom de plume of Jean Baptiste Poquelin, a seventeenth-century French playwright. He is best known for his comedies of satire, such as The Misanthrope and Tartuffe.

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Example Sentences

I am thankful to have grown up in a bilingual country and to have attended a high school where we studied Molière in French and Shakespeare in English.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 1, 2026

But it strikes a false and pandering note, since Tartuffe, as in Molière, has been plainly exposed as an opportunistic, lascivious fraud—and the only one in the play.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 17, 2025

Unfortunately it is precisely that element that is missing from the Molière in the Park production of “The Miser” at the LeFrak Center in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

From New York Times • May 3, 2024

Yet van Hove undermined it with a stultifying black-and-white production that had less to do with Molière than with his own directorial tics.

From New York Times • Dec. 15, 2022

Boileau had created such an atmosphere about Molière and Racine; Sainte-Beuve had attempted, but unsuccessfully, to do the same for the poets of the romantic renaissance.

From Shelburne Essays, Third Series by More, Paul Elmer