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Platonic   /plətˈɑnɪk/   Listen
adjective
Platonical, Platonic  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to Plato, or his philosophy, school, or opinions.
2.
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.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Platonic" Quotes from Famous Books



... place Mrs. Rathburn would have selected to spend a summer was an isolated ranch in the sagebrush, but propinquity, she knew, had done wonders in friendships that had seemed hopelessly platonic, so, when Hugh urged them to join him, and endeavored to impart some of his own enthusiasm for ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... onion-tangy tzvivvele Supp and the savory pork-smell of Schnitz un Knepp, a cannibal odor that disturbed not a bit Wutzchen, snoring behind the cookstove. Chickens, penned beneath the bed, chuckled in their bedtime caucus. The cow stood cheek-by-jowl with Yonnie, warming him with platonic graciousness as they shared the hay Aaron had spread before them. Martha stirred her soup. "When the bishop married me to you," she told Aaron, "he said naught of my having ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang

... accident of particular minds, as are certain systems, for instance, of prophetical interpretation. It is not the sudden birth of a crisis, as the Lutheran or Wesleyan doctrine. It is not the splendid development of some uprising philosophy, as the Cartesian or Platonic. It is not the fashion of a season, as certain medical treatments may be considered. It has had a place, if not possession, in the intellectual world from time immemorial; it has been received by minds the most various, and in systems of religion the most hostile to each other. ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... teaches, is the principle of all virtues; it is God Himself. Next to it in dignity comes humility. The beauty of the soul, he says in the true Platonic vein, is to be well ordered, with the higher faculties above the lower, each in its proper place. The will should be supreme over the understanding, the understanding over the senses. Whatever we will earnestly, ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... good gin and good cheer. At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound .. thoughts were incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen whale fishery. In the first place, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville


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