beau ideal
noun
a conception of perfect beauty.
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beau ideal
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beau idéal
beau idéalnounperfect beauty or excellence
beau ideal
Americannoun
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beaus ideal,
plural
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beaux ideal,
plural
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beau ideals
plural
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a conception of perfect beauty.
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a model of excellence.
beau idéal
British
/ bo ideal /
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of beau ideal
First recorded in 1795–1805, beau ideal is from French beau idéal literally, “ideal beauty.” See beau, ideal
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:
The Chopin that emerges in “Becoming George” is far from a Romantic beau ideal.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
Their friendship was the beau ideal of warrior comrades.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 8, 2022
Lipsyte: One of the reasons that the older reporters were antagonistic to him, besides the fact that he wasn’t laconic like Joe Louis, their beau ideal, was the unorthodoxy of his style.
From Slate ● Jun. 4, 2016
His birthplace, Urbino, was also that of Raphael, the beau ideal to whom all painters aspired.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 16, 2013
He appeared all over the beau ideal of a heavy weight wrestler; "lish as a cat," straight as a wand, good shoulders, and long arms.
From Wrestling and Wrestlers: Biographical Sketches of Celebrated Athletes of the Northern Ring; to Which is Added Notes on Bull and Badger Baiting by Sidney Gilpin
Will’s beau idéal, Ronald Reagan, used it frequently on the rubber-chicken-and-peas circuit.
From Salon ● Dec. 20, 2025
It dominated the public discussion, especially among young English economists in training, for whom the brilliant, dashing, socially connected Keynes was a beau idéal.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 18, 2017
The Duchesse was radiant in health and beauty, and the Duc looking, as he always does, more distingué, than any one else—the perfect beau idéal of a nobleman.
From The Idler in France by Marguerite, Countess of Blessington
She is a fair vision, the beau idéal of a poet's first mistress; but has few mortal lineaments.
From The Life of Friedrich Schiller Comprehending an Examination of His Works by Thomas Carlyle
Therefore, it results, that the second condition in proof of the superiority of the free, or one-sided free trade principle, as represented in Switzerland, the embodied beau idéal of the theory, is not fulfilled.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 by Various
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.
