Thoreau

American  

[thuh-roh, thawr-oh, thohr-oh] / θəˈroʊ, ˈθɔr oʊ, ˈθoʊr oʊ /

noun

1. Henry David, 1817–62, U.S. naturalist and author.

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Thoreau British  

/ ˈθɔːrəʊ, θɔːˈrəʊ /

noun

1. Henry David. 1817–62, US writer, noted esp for Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), an account of his experiment in living in solitude. A powerful social critic, his essay Civil Disobedience (1849) influenced such dissenters as Gandhi

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Other Word Forms

• Thoreauvian adjective

Example Sentences

Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax, objecting to slavery and the Mexican War.

From MarketWatch • Apr. 6, 2026

Perhaps the most eloquent is the naturalist and essayist Henry David Thoreau, who wrote “man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can do without.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 5, 2025

For e.e. cummings, like earlier American transcendentalist poets like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, paying attention was everything.

From Salon • Apr. 20, 2025

In “A Lesson From Aloes,” a character quotes Thoreau: “There is a purpose to life, and we will be measured by the extent to which we harness ourselves to it.”

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 10, 2025

This was a woods for looming bears, dangling snakes, wolves with laser-red eyes, strange noises, sudden terrors—a place of “standing night,” as Thoreau neatly and nervously put it.

From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson