sleeping beauty

plural sleeping beauties

1. 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

plural Sleeping Beauties

1. A fairy tale originally titled La Belle au bois dormant by Charles Perrault.
2. 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

   2 more examples

   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

   They emote and are long-winded about it; they express affection and passion and have sex and revel in it; they are cruel and vengeful; they whine and complain, gossip, browbeat, and nag—in short, everything that we have always suspected is behind the refractive exteriors of the more famous Cinderellas and Sleeping Beauties. […] It features a storyteller who, tired of telling the same old Cinderellas and Sleeping Beauties, meets up with some fairies in a wood as he is searching for new material.

   2023, Nancy L. Canepa, transl., The Enchanted Boot: Italian Fairy Tales & Their Tellers, Wayne State University Press, →ISBN

3. biologyA transposon used in genetic engineering.
4. humorousOne who is asleep at an inappropriate time.

   Wake up Sleeping Beauty, school starts in 10 minutes.

1. Alternative letter-case form of sleeping beauty (Oxalis corniculata).