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.

Roland had grown up reading the philosophes and was influenced by Diderot and Rousseau, among others.

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

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

The answer may seem obvious: Diderot is writing about the transformation in knowledge that we now call the Scientific Revolution.

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