Beauty

Beauty is a dominant theme in western art, as evidenced in Nymph with morning glory flowers by Jules Joseph Lefebvre.

Beauty is a characteristic of a person, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture. As a cultural creation, beauty has been extremely commercialized. An "ideal beauty" is an entity which is admired, or possesses features widely attributed to beauty in a particular culture.

The experience of "beauty" often involves the interpretation of some entity as being in balance and harmony with nature, which may lead to feelings of attraction and emotional well-being. Because this is a subjective experience, it is often said that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."^[1] In its most profound sense, beauty may engender a salient experience of positive reflection about the meaning of one's own existence. A subject of beauty is anything that resonates with personal meaning.

The classical Greek adjective beautiful was καλλός. The Koine Greek word for beautiful was "ὡραῖος",^[2] an adjective etymologically coming from the word "ὥρα" meaning hour. In Koine Greek, beauty was thus associated with "being of one's hour". A ripe fruit (of its time) was considered beautiful, whereas a young woman trying to appear older or an older woman trying to appear younger would not be considered beautiful. ὡραῖος in Attic Greek had many meanings, including youthful and ripe old age.

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