Molière

American  

[mohl-yair, maw-lyer] / moʊlˈyɛər, mɔˈlyɛr /

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)

---

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

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

But a current production of “Tartuffe,” presented by the theater company Molière in the Park, drawing from the playwright’s original version, takes a different approach.

From New York Times • May 11, 2023

The Comédie-Française, France’s most prestigious theater company, joined in with a Molière performance from the theater’s windows and balcony.

From New York Times • Mar. 9, 2023

In those beautiful gardens had been seen promenading Corneille and Madame de Sévigné, Molière, Bossuet, Boileau, Racine, in the company of the great Condé.

From Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good by Cousin, Victor