sleeping beauty
sleeping beauty noun: a creeping woodsorrel (Oxalis corniculata) a somewhat delicate-appearing, low-growing herbaceous plant, found in warm-temperate and subtropical climates worldwide.
Noun (1)
sleeping beauty (plural sleeping beauties)
- A creeping woodsorrel (Oxalis corniculata) a somewhat delicate-appearing, low-growing herbaceous plant, found in warm-temperate and subtropical climates worldwide.
- Synonyms:
- procumbent yellow sorrel
Proper noun capitalized: Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty (plural Sleeping Beauties)
- A fairy tale originally titled La Belle au bois dormant by Charles Perrault.
- The main character in this story, who is in unbroken slumber under a magical spell, awaiting the kiss of a prince.
- How far have we come since the days of our favorite childhood fairy tales if women still need a rescuer like the Cinderellas, Sleeping Beauties, and other helpless maidens of the past?2012, Vera Sonja Maass, Finding Love That Lasts: Breaking the Pattern of Dead End Relationships, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 81
- Womanly duties, as Joan thought of them, were fine for girls who imagined themselves as Cinderellas or Sleeping Beauties, good girls rewarded for menial housework and, in the case of Sleeping Beauty, a passivity so profound it was deaf, dumb, blind, and comatose.2014, Kathryn Harrison, Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured, Doubleday, →ISBN
- A transposon used in genetic engineering.
- One who is asleep at an inappropriate time.
- Wake up Sleeping Beauty, school starts in 10 minutes.
Noun (2) capitalized: Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty
- Alternative letter-case form of sleeping beauty (Oxalis corniculata).
Synonyms of sleeping beauty
- procumbent yellow sorrel
Forms of sleeping beauty
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | sleeping beauties |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Sleeping Beauties |
Origin of sleeping beauty
In the genetics sense, so called because the transposon was brought back to activity from a long evolutionary sleep.
Words formed from sleeping beauty
Questions about sleeping beauty
- What does sleeping beauty mean?
- Sleeping beauty means a creeping woodsorrel (Oxalis corniculata) a somewhat delicate-appearing, low-growing herbaceous plant, found in warm-temperate and subtropical climates worldwide.
- What part of speech is sleeping beauty?
- Sleeping beauty can be a noun or a proper noun.
- What is the plural of sleeping beauty?
- The plural of sleeping beauty is sleeping beauties.
Words near sleeping beauty in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sleeping beauty (page history and authors); Sleeping Beauty (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Sleeping Beauty.wav.
Cite this entry: “sleeping beauty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sleeping_beauty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.