Platonic love
Americannoun
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Platonism. love of the Idea of beauty, seen as terminating an evolution from the desire for an individual and the love of physical beauty to the love and contemplation of spiritual or ideal beauty.
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Usually platonic love an intimate companionship or relationship, especially between two people of different genders, that is characterized by the absence of sexual involvement; a spiritual affection.
Etymology
Origin of Platonic love
First recorded in 1635–45
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.
Platonic love is heroic and “excites to the desire for philosophy and truth,” he declaims.
From Slate • Feb. 2, 2016
But it took the cleverness of Baldassare Castiglione, a 16th century popularizer of Platonic love treatises, to humanize the conceit for sophisticated courtiers.
From Time Magazine Archive
He has perplexed himself by a formal protest against the perils of Platonic love, but apologises for his hero in the manners of the age.
From Amenities of Literature Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature by Disraeli, Isaac
Platonic love was possible, doubly possible in souls tense with poetic wants; it became a reality through the strength of the wish for it.
From Euphorion Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the Renaissance - Vol. II by Lee, Vernon
Platonic love is a high personal passion, like the former, with the exception that no physical influence of sex enters into it; imagination exalting the soul, instead of inflaming the senses.
From The Friendships of Women by Alger, William Rounseville
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
