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
Platonic love is described by Howell as “a love abstracted from all corporeal gross impressions and sensual appetites, but consists in contemplations and ideas of the mind.”
From The Radicalism of Shelley and Its Sources by MacDonald, Daniel J.
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
Platonic love for a woman of that class!
From First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life by Alarcón, Pedro Antonio de
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.
