noun
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a lover, sweetheart, or escort of a girl or woman
-
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:
Timby extended her time in Ireland and documented much of it for her newfound following - but she didn't reveal anything about her new beau.
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2026
The Chopin that emerges in “Becoming George” is far from a Romantic beau ideal.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
Will’s beau idéal, Ronald Reagan, used it frequently on the rubber-chicken-and-peas circuit.
From Salon ● Dec. 20, 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
This is a huge limitation, as Flock has been used by officers to track not just exes but the new beaus with whom they have moved on.
From Salon ● Aug. 17, 2026
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
As Kya’s contrasting young beaus, Dickinson and Smith look pretty much interchangeable, but each actor aptly conveys his respective role: brutal jock in the case of Chase, and sensitive scholar for Tate.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 13, 2022
How many gatherings will it take before these reluctant beaus admit to their affection?
From New York Times ● Oct. 28, 2020
Perhaps after November after I prove up, I can think about beaus.
From "Hattie Big Sky" by Kirby Larson
What strikes you first are his scenes’ forthright emotions—a group of women tearfully sending their beaux off to fight in World War II, the isolation of a young man dining alone at a cafeteria.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
Over the years, Swift has been mocked for the often autobiographical nature of her songs — when not alluding to bad behavior by old beaux, she often pushed back against critics and producers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2023
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
Or was she, as I’d rather think, cutting up her cardboard beaux in her mind even as she created them, and laughing at her public as much as at her characters?
From The Guardian ● Jul. 15, 2017
“How does Washington come on? Many beaux? Many believers? Many friends? Answer these questions you wicked little Maggie.”
From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
