Diderot

American  

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

noun

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

---

Diderot British  

/ ˈdiːdərəʊ, didro /

noun

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

---

Example Sentences

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

Figures like Diderot and Hume derived some of their ideas on liberty from classical texts, where they found declarations of political and personal freedoms.

From New York Times • Feb. 2, 2021

While brief accounts of several hundred dead scholars and public intellectuals militates against sustained reading, a few pages at a time about interdisciplinary giants such as Leibniz, Diderot and Germaine de Stael can be energizing.

From Washington Post • Nov. 17, 2020

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