Émile

American  

[ey-meel] / eɪˈmil /

noun

1. a didactic novel (1762) by J. J. Rousseau, dealing principally with the author's theories of education.

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Émile Cultural  

1. A work on education by Jean Jacques Rousseau, describing how a fictional boy, Émile, should be brought up. The book had an enormous influence on education during the age of romanticism and afterward.

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Example Sentences

Sam Sacks praises the Tamil writer Jeyamohan’s novel as “an astonishing work of naturalism” that calls to mind the fiction of Émile Zola.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 30, 2026

With Franzen-esque fastidiousness, Choi unpacks each character’s backstory, exposing vanities and delusions in a cool, caustic voice, a 21st century Émile Zola.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 2, 2025

She’s about to be transferred to another facility in the south, where Émile and François are going to move.

From New York Times • Mar. 14, 2024

We are, in real time, witnessing an entire gender experience a phenomenon French sociologist Émile Durkheim termed "anomie".

From Salon • Jun. 20, 2023

He meets many painters at the studio, including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Émile Bernard.

From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman