ideal
Pertaining to ideas, or to a given idea.
Adjective 4 meanings
Pertaining to ideas, or to a given idea.
Existing only in the mind; conceptual, imaginary.
Optimal; being the best possibility.
Perfect, flawless, having no defects.
Noun 4 meanings
A perfect standard of beauty, intellect etc., or a standard of excellence to aim at.
A two-sided ideal; a subset of a ring which is closed under both left and right multiplication by elements of the ring.
A non-empty lower set (of a partially ordered set) which is closed under binary suprema (a.k.a. joins).
A collection of sets, considered small or negligible, such that every subset of each member and the union of any two members are also members of the collection.
Etymology
From French idéal, from Late Latin ideālis (“existing in idea”), by surface analysis, idea + -al, from Latin idea (“idea”); see idea. In mathematics, the noun ring theory sense was first introduced by German mathematician Richard Dedekind in his 1871 edition of a text on number theory.
Similar and opposite words
IDEAL at a glance
IDEAL has 5 letters and scores 6 points in Scrabble (I 1 + D 2 + E 1 + A 1 + L 1) and 7 in Words With Friends, before board bonuses. It ranks #3,303 by how often it appears in everyday English. It is valid in ENABLE, NWL2023, Collins/SOWPODS.
Rhymes with ideal
All rhymesOne letter away
- IDEAS6
- ILEAL5
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