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:
It’s not surprising that Mr. Serrano found his way to Ms. Wilson, who, like Mr. Duncan, the author’s beau ideal of a player, “banks in beauty.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025
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
Scott used to say Edgerstone was his beau ideal of the character of a country gentleman.
From Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume 6 by J. G. (John Gibson) Lockhart
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
Mr. Hope-Scott was the beau idéal of an English gentleman, and a model Catholic devoted to the service of the Church, doing all the good that lay in his power, far and near.
From Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 by Robert Ornsby
He has not used Buddhism either as a bugbear or as a beau idéal.
From Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I Essays on the Science of Religion by F. Max (Friedrich Max) Müller
Surely not without reason, when pirates, highwaymen, and other varieties of the extensive genus Marauder, are the only beau idéal of the active, as splenetic and railing misanthropy is of the speculative energy.
From Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
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.
