Platonic love

American  

[pluh-ton-ik luhv, pley-] / pləˈtɒn ɪk ˈlʌv, pleɪ- /

noun

1. 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.

2. 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.

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Etymology

Origin of Platonic love

First recorded in 1635–45

Example Sentences

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

But the trouble with Platonic love is that it's always turning out too nice to be Platonic, or too Platonic to be nice.

From The Prairie Wife by Dunn, Harvey

Yet Platonic love, in both its Attic and its medi�val manifestations, was one and the same thing.

From A Problem in Greek Ethics Being an inquiry into the phenomenon of sexual inversion by Symonds, John Addington

It was not exactly a case of Platonic love; it was a case of hopeless love, in a way, and yet, not altogether hopeless, for they were happy.

From The Cassowary What Chanced in the Cleft Mountains by Waterloo, Stanley