ideal.
Pertaining to ideas, or to a given idea.
Meaning & usage
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.
Teaching or relating to the doctrine of idealism.
the ideal theory or philosophy
Not actually present, but considered as present when limits at infinity are included.
ideal point
An ideal triangle in the hyperbolic disk is one bounded by three geodesics that meet precisely on the circle.
Where this word comes from
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. The concept was quickly expanded to ring theory and later generalised to order theory. The set theory and Lie theory senses can be regarded as applications of the order theory sense.
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.
Let #92;mathbb#123;Z#125; be the ring of integers and let 2#92;mathbb#123;Z#125; be its ideal of even integers. Then the quotient ring #92;mathbb#123;Z#125;#47;2#92;mathbb#123;Z#125; is a Boolean ring.
The product of two ideals #92;mathfrak#123;a#125; and #92;mathfrak#123;b#125; is an ideal #92;mathfrak#123;ab#125; which is a subset of the intersection of #92;mathfrak#123;a#125; and #92;mathfrak#123;b#125;. This should help to understand why maximal ideals are prime ideals. Likewise, the union of #92;mathfrak#123;a#125; and #92;mathfrak#123;b#125; is a subset of #92;mathfrak#123;a#43;b#125;.
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.
Formally, an ideal I of a given set X is a nonempty subset of the powerset #92;mathcal#123;P#125;(X) such that: (1)#92;#92;emptyset#92;inI, (2)#92;A#92;inI#92;andB#92;subseteqA#92;impliesB#92;inI and (3)#92;A,B#92;inI#92;impliesA#92;cupB#92;inI.
A Lie subalgebra (subspace that is closed under the Lie bracket) 𝖍 of a given Lie algebra 𝖌 such that the Lie bracket [𝖌,𝖍] is a subset of 𝖍.
A subsemigroup with the property that if any semigroup element outside of it is added to any one of its members, the result must lie outside of it.
The set of natural numbers with multiplication as the monoid operation (instead of addition) has multiplicative ideals, such as, for example, the set {1, 3, 9, 27, 81, ...}. If any member of it is multiplied by a number which is not a power of 3 then the result will not be a power of three.
Where this word comes from
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. The concept was quickly expanded to ring theory and later generalised to order theory. The set theory and Lie theory senses can be regarded as applications of the order theory sense.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.