noun
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a lover, sweetheart, or escort of a girl or woman
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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:
Separately, UK actor Hannah Waddingham is depicted next to her "NHS surgeon beau", who the paper says has got a "Hollywood makeover".
From BBC ● Jul. 29, 2026
Was this the last time the music megastar would grace the Kelce family luxury suite to watch her beau rack up the receptions?
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 26, 2025
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
It was easy to see he needed looking after, but what did she need that an old man could give when she already had a beau her own age who was anxious to marry her?
From "Cold Sassy Tree" by Olive Ann Burns
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
Both beaus met Young's parents – though Young's family wasn't particularly fond of Jones, Us Weekly reports.
From Fox News ● Dec. 22, 2021
How many gatherings will it take before these reluctant beaus admit to their affection?
From New York Times ● Oct. 28, 2020
I hadn’t seen a picture of her since she’d been in high school and now she was twenty-one and taught music and had lots of beaus.
From "Homesick" by Jean Fritz
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
The book, as it stands, feels ominously loveless, more hospitable to dolts than to eligible beaux, yet at least seven writers have sought to flesh it out and, in so doing, to warm it up.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 5, 2017
On either side of the esplanade that runs between the Champs Élysées and the Seine is Charles Girault’s exquisite pair of beaux arts buildings, the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 5, 2016
“We occupy three beaux arts mansions that were originally private homes. The buildings are landmarked, and our donors today are philanthropists and supporters of education for girls.”
From "Genuine Fraud" by E. Lockhart
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.
