n.
Function: noun
Date: 15th century
1 : a standard of perfection, beauty, or excellence
2 : one regarded as exemplifying an ideal and often taken as a model for imitation
3 : an ultimate object or aim of endeavor : GOAL
4 : a subset of a mathematical ring that is closed under addition and subtraction and contains the products of any given element of the subset with each element of the ring
synonyms see MODEL
– ide · al · less \ ī - ' d ē (- ə )l-l ə s \ adjective