platonic

CEFRB2

/pləˈtɒnɪk/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    adjective

    Close and affectionate but not sexual or romantic.

  2. 02

    adjective

    Extra detail

    A Platonist; a follower of Plato's ideas.

Examples

  • He's not my boyfriend, it's just platonic love with benefits!

  • Tom is just a platonic friend.

At a glance

Sits at B2 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
2

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

  1. Alternative letter-case form of platonic (non-sexual).

  2. Neither sexual nor romantic in nature; being or exhibiting platonic love.

  3. Alternative letter-case form of Platonic (of or relating to the philosophical views of Plato and his successors).

More examples

In context

  • They are good friends, but their relationship is strictly platonic.

  • The homosexual dismisses heterosexual love as a distasteful bondage to normalcy and bourgeois domestication, but the Platonic lover of the soul is dismissing all sexuality as bondage to the physical world.

  • Plato gave so brilliant and impressive a defense of this common human feeling, that the doctrine of the reality of abstract objects has been known as the platonic theory of ideas ever since.

Antonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

Their relationship was purely blank, with no romantic feelings or physical attraction.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

From Latin Platōnicus. By surface analysis, Platon (“Plato”) + -ic (“relating to”).