matinee idol
3
6.6
- noun
- /ˌmætɪˈneɪ ˈaɪdəl/
:
ídolo de matiné
- The familiar feels fresh again as dapper matinee idol George Valentin falls from grace after refusing to switch to speaking roles.
- matinee idol looks
- matinee idol, star
- matinee idols of her day
And he's sort of like this matinee idol, but he sings like a man that survived a storm.
- And he's sort of like this matinee idol, but he sings like a man that survived a storm.
Examples
-
A real matinee idol.
-
Jean Dujardin stars as a matinee idol who gets squeezed out of the business when sound movies arrive.
-
I was the first matinee idol in television.
-
Neil Hamilton, the matinee idol who had posed for paintings on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post during the Great War, told his dream.
Fiction book (1995) -
And he's sort of like this matinee idol, but he sings like a man that survived a storm.
-
When he was not smiling, he looked like a matinee idol, and when he was smiling, he looked like a friendly lifeguard.
Fiction book (1996) -
I don't even mind playing love scenes with matinee idols who bathe every other Tuesday.
-
To be sure, this was a Kafka who could have passed for a matinee idol or high-school quarterback.
Fiction book (1994) -
But he just, you know, it's hard to be like a matinee idol and then be like, now you're just an older guy who women are not like fawning over.
-
"Aaron is a matinee idol with the soul of a character actor," the filmmaker says.
Synonyms
172
1.0
A famous actor who plays leading parts in films
151
3.2
A person many people admire or love too much
16
2.3
A famous actor or actress who plays lead roles in movies
How Popular
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'matinee' (an afternoon performance) modifies 'idol' (an admired performer), so a learner who knows both words can infer an admired performer associated with daytime/theatre screenings. The phrase is a conventional label for a popular actor liked for their looks, but its core meaning is transparently built from the constituents and is cross-linguistically comprehensible.
Etymology
Matinee idol comes from old theatre days when a matinee was a daytime show and an idol was someone people loved. Because these handsome actors drew large daytime crowds, the phrase came to mean 'a popular male actor admired for his looks and charm'.