From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishparagonpar‧a‧gon /ˈpærəɡən $ -ɡɑːn/ noun [countable] GOOD/EXCELLENTsomeone who is perfect or is extremely brave, good etc – often used humorouslyparagon of a paragon of virtue
Examples from the Corpus
paragon• The royal family could be relied upon as paragons of etiquette.• They, or at least the Quakers who lived in our town, had become paragons of propriety.• What did our long-suffering paragon of good grace do?• It sometimes came as a slight shock to Wycliffe to have this paragon of the modern virtues working under his direction.• I will actually allow you to see and speak to this paragon of beauty-not to mention good taste-in person.Origin paragon (1500-1600) Early French, from Old Italian paragone “stone for testing gold”, from paragonare “to test on such a stone”, from Greek parakonan “to sharpen” 