PLATONIC • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Platonic

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/plətˈɑnɪk/ Listen

adjective

Platonical, Platonic adj.

Of or pertaining to Plato, or his philosophy, school, or opinions.

Pure, passionless; nonsexual; philosophical.

Platonic bodies, the five regular geometrical solids; namely, the tetrahedron, hexahedron or cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron.

Platonic love, a pure, spiritual affection, subsisting between persons of opposite sex, unmixed with carnal desires, and regarding the mind only and its excellences; a species of love for which Plato was a warm advocate.

Platonic year (Astron.), a period of time determined by the revolution of the equinoxes, or the space of time in which the stars and constellations return to their former places in respect to the equinoxes; called also great year. This revolution, which is caused by the precession of the equinoxes, is accomplished in about 26,000 years.

noun

Platonic n. A follower of Plato; a Platonist.

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Etymology of 'Platonic'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Platonic" Quotes from Famous Books

... yourself must be sensible would be ridiculous. Were I to extend it farther, it would still conclude more to your disadvantage, but I think enough is said to convince any impartial person, that if the one, with the smallest appearance of justice, was denied an admission into the Platonic commonwealth, the other would have been kick'd out of it with shame and disgrace; yet, you have very pleasantly contrived to find a place there for yourself, in Homer's room. You have adopted and inserted in your Clarissa the four following verses, of a poetical encomium which ...

— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous

... sixth century of our era DAMASCIUS the SYRIAN, the last of the Neo-Platonic philosophers, wrote in Greek in a work on the Doubts and Solutions of the first Principles, in which he says: "But the Babylonians, like the rest of the Barbarians, pass over in silence the One principle of the Universe, ...

— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum

... young girls of just that kind. Before the colonel had come regularly to the house Sylvie had heard in the Tiphaines' salon strange stories of his life and morals. Old maids preserve in their love-affairs the exaggerated Platonic sentiments which young girls of twenty are wont to profess; they hold to these fixed doctrines like all who have little experience of life and no personal knowledge of how great social forces modify, impair, and bring to nought ...

— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... some highly respectable old gentleman in the City who thus accommodated on a wet day a very nice young woman in humble circumstances. She was as full of apologies as of rainwater, and he of good-natured rejoinders, intended to put her at her ease; so that he became, in a Platonic and paternal way, quite friendly with her by the time she arrived at her destination—which happened to be his own door. She turned out to be his new cook, which was ...

— Some Private Views • James Payn

... much the same in effect, and Hartley was not critical. She was a good listener, as women who have something else to think about often are; and so they rode along the twisting path, and the wind sang in the plumes of the bamboo trees, and Hartley believed that it sang a romantic lyric of platonic admiration, exquisitely hinted at by a tactful man, and properly appreciated by a ...

— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

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