“Beauty and the Beast”

Cultural  

1. A French fairy tale about a beautiful and gentle young woman who is taken to live with a man-beast in return for a good deed the Beast did for her father. Beauty is kind to the well-mannered Beast but pines for her family until the Beast allows her to visit them. Once home, Beauty delays her return until she hears that the Beast is dying without her. She returns to the Beast and brings him back to health. When she agrees to marry him, the evil spell upon him is broken, and he becomes a handsome prince. Beauty and her prince live happily ever after.

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Example Sentences

That’s the beauty and the beast of it.

From Los Angeles Times • May 10, 2022

Denham’s insistence that this is a story of beauty and the beast here gets presented as a cynical showman’s hokum rather than some fairy-tale insight.

From Slate • Nov. 8, 2018

Dovima performs a couture riff on the cliché of beauty and the beast.

From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 18, 2018

Later Kong movies have tried to sidestep criticism by changing the representation of the islanders while leaving beauty and the beast intact.

From New York Times • Mar. 9, 2017

BLOOM: When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the beast.

From Ulysses by Joyce, James