platonic love

plural platonic loves · alternative Platonic love

1. countableuncountableIntimate but non-sexual and non-romantic affection.

plural Platonic loves

1. countableuncountableAlternative letter-case form of platonic love.

   The practice of Platonic love, of which he had formed ſo fine an idea in ſpeculation, appeared to him but a chimera in reality.

   1773 April 12, “The Force of Honour”, in The Western Flying Post; or Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury and General Advertiser, volume XXV, number 2190, Sherborne, Dorset: […] R[obert] Goadby, […], →OCLC, appendix (volume II), page 58, column 1

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   Ye ſanctified and holy, / Who methodiſtically prove / The force of true-⁠-⁠-Platonic love, / Indulge for once with Scholey.

   1775 February 18, “To the Printers of the Cambridge Chronicle”, in The Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, volume XIII, number 643, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: […] T. Fletcher and F. Hodson, […], →OCLC, page [2], column 4

   One heart, but in two bodies join’d, / By ancient writers is defin’d, / A friend in truth to prove; / To me ſhe’s preſent when away, / My tender thoughts with Delia ſtay; / Is this Platonic love?

   1789 March 26, “Poet’s Corner. The Difference between Love and Friendship.”, in The State Gazette of North-Carolina, volume IV, number 168, Edenton, N.C.: […] Hodge & Wills, […], →OCLC, page [4], column 1

   Homosexual appetites, tastes, and fantasies, one is reminded while listening to Elliot, appear to be every bit as various as heterosexual ones, with the range of homosex—running from an almost Platonic love to sadistic lust—being no less wide than that of heterosex.

   1970 September, Joseph Epstein, “Homo/Hetero: The Struggle for Sexual Identity”, in Harper’s Magazine, New York, N.Y., →ISSN, →OCLC

   I didn’t know I loved the earth / can someone who hasn’t worked the earth love it / I’ve never worked the earth / it must be my only Platonic love

   1975 [1962], Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, “Things I Didn’t Know I Loved”, in Things I Didn’t Know I Loved: Selected Poems of Nazim Hikmet, New York, N.Y.: Persea Books, →ISBN, page 80

   Passion, providence, and imitation are conventionally the respective ruling forces of these three processes. Yet to take them at face value, as an innocent reading of the poem might advise, would be to betray Garcilaso’s own efforts, in this sonnet and elsewhere, to expose the arbitrariness of grandiose idealist concepts such as Platonic love and providential history.

   1998 spring, José María Rodríguez García, “Epos delendum est: The Subject of Carthage in Garcilaso’s ‘A Boscán desde “La Goleta”’”, in Hispanic Review, volume 66, number 2, Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 166