Definition of "beau ideal" []

• The concept of perfect beauty. (noun)
• An idealized type or model: the beau ideal of a high-ranking army officer. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Here is Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical of 1890 -- and please remember that Leo XIII was the beau ideal of our capitalist statesmen and editors, as wise and kind and gentle-souled a pope as ever roasted a heretic."
• "I regard the second speech against Rullus as the ne plus ultra, the very beau ideal of a political harangue to the people on the side of order and good government."
• "The Morrisons had begun speaking to me again, and were very civil in public - it was represented as being a sudden love-match, of course, between the dashing hussar and the beautiful provincial, so they had to pretend I was their beau ideal of a son-in-law."