Beauté

Beauté is the French noun for beauty. It denotes qualities that evoke aesthetic pleasure, harmony, or attractiveness, and is used to describe people, objects, and experiences, as well as broader artistic or natural phenomena. In philosophy and art, beauté is a subject of ongoing discussion about what counts as beautiful and why.

Etymology: The term beauté originates in Old French and ultimately traces back to Latin bellus, meaning beautiful.

Historical and theoretical perspectives: In classical aesthetics, beauty was linked to order, proportion, and form, often associated with harmony and the sense of a unified whole. In modern and contemporary thought, beauty is frequently treated as partly subjective and culturally contingent, shaped by context, social norms, and media representations as much as by intrinsic qualities.

Cultural usage and influence: In French culture, la beauté has long been a prevalent theme in poetry, painting, cinema, and fashion. The word appears in branding and marketing to convey quality and desirability, while public discourse also addresses how beauty standards intersect with gender, power, and ethics in production and consumer culture.

See also: Beauty, Aesthetics, French language.