Barthes

American  

[bahrt, bart] / bɑrt, bært /

noun

1. Roland, 1915–80, French literary critic, philosopher, and semiotician.

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Barthes British  

/ bart /

noun

1. Roland . 1915–80, French writer and critic, who applied structuralist theory to literature and popular culture: his books include Mythologies (1957) and Elements of Semiology (1964)

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Example Sentences

Of this lineup of serial offenders, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty had prior convictions, mostly for communism, and only Barthes had a sense of humor.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 21, 2025

Roland Barthes was a French literary critic who worked in semiotics, the study of signs and symbols, just as Jung did.

From Salon • Nov. 29, 2024

The title of Briggs’ second book is also a reference to Barthes, whose work she has translated, and who called the novel “the long form.”

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 4, 2023

I was reminded of the observation of Roland Barthes, the French philosopher, that in every old photograph lurks catastrophe.

From New York Times • Aug. 6, 2023

This peculiar blend is what Barthes was referring to when he described facts as linguistic yet claiming to be copies of the real.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton