noun
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a lover, sweetheart, or escort of a girl or woman
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a man who is greatly concerned with his clothes and appearance; dandy
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of beau
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English, from French, from Latin bellus “beautiful”
Explanation
A beau is an old-fashioned term for "boyfriend." When your great-grandmother was young, she probably had a beau. Beau means "handsome" in French. Pronounce it the same way the French do, with a long o: "boh." The word recalls more innocent times, when gentleman courted their ladies and skirts barely rose above ankle level. You'll hardly ever hear beau used today, unless you're watching a movie, play or television drama set in the past.
Vocabulary lists containing beau
Scrabble: Four-Letter Words with 3 Vowels
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The Glass Menagerie
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The Haunting of Hill House
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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:
Old enough to know that John Donaldson, her beau of more than a decade, was the man she wanted to marry.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 22, 2026
Will’s beau idéal, Ronald Reagan, used it frequently on the rubber-chicken-and-peas circuit.
From Salon ● Dec. 20, 2025
It’s not surprising that Mr. Serrano found his way to Ms. Wilson, who, like Mr. Duncan, the author’s beau ideal of a player, “banks in beauty.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025
Octavia, in which a gushing party girl falls instantly in love with a blond, sharp-cheeked beau called Jeremy, later became an ITV series.
From BBC ● Oct. 6, 2025
I watched a young woman who came in, found her table, put her head down, and went to sleep while awaiting her beau.
From "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing" by Ted Conover
As fate would have it, all that time spent researching how bats find their beaus may have led to another pairing.
From National Geographic ● Feb. 14, 2024
Shortly afterward, the two were out and about on a double date with their beaus.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2023
To fight back, he started giving in-person architecture tours — in Kyiv and elsewhere — with hopes of convincing more people that his brutalist beaus are worth keeping.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 25, 2022
A woman has learned a little more about her late grandmother now that she’s gone through a 73-year-old scrapbook of her grandma’s former beaus.
From Fox News ● Oct. 11, 2021
Perhaps after November after I prove up, I can think about beaus.
From "Hattie Big Sky" by Kirby Larson
The entire family showed up, including Kylie Jenner in a white ballgown with a matching hat and big sister Kourtney Kardashian in deconstructed Thom Browne to go with beaux Travis Barker’s Thom Browne suit.
From Washington Times ● May 3, 2022
The book, as it stands, feels ominously loveless, more hospitable to dolts than to eligible beaux, yet at least seven writers have sought to flesh it out and, in so doing, to warm it up.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 5, 2017
The “Follies” tale of two showgirls and their beaux bears the doom of the ancient Greek stage.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2016
The hulking beaux arts buildings that line streets such as Spring and Broadway are a testament to downtown’s former commercial might.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 26, 2016
But Fanny spent time with her other beaux, and Charles had another love, too—beetles.
From "Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith" by Deborah Heiligman
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.
