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
I do not know whether you call love of the heart, love of the soul, whether sentimental idealism, Platonic love, in a word, can exist on this earth; I doubt it, myself.
From The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume 3 by Maupassant, Guy de
The only kind of love that is really blind and deaf is Platonic love.
From Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 05 Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors by Hubbard, Elbert
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
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.
