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Molière

American  
[mohl-yair, maw-lyer] / moʊlˈjɛər, mɔˈljɛr /

noun

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


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)

"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

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.


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.

See Examples For:

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

Teenagers are, like Molière, keen to discover and condemn adult duplicity.

From New York Times ● May 11, 2023

Rabelais dissatisfies him; Scarron dissatisfies him; Molière, Swift, Sterne, not to mention others, dissatisfy him.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 68, June, 1863 by Various

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