Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🏢 An unnoticed company 😴 A beautiful sleeper
sleeping beauty

sleeping beauty

1 9.0
A company not well known that has value and another company might buy
  • noun
  • Jargon
translation icon : empresa durmiente

Examples

  • It's a real sleeping beauty.

    The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)

  • Your sleeping beauties know there's a war on, do they?

    A Bridge Too Far (1977)

  • The company was seen as a sleeping beauty due to its undervalued assets and lack of interest from buyers.

  • Investors are looking for sleeping beauties that could yield high profits with the right attention.

  • Despite its potential, the firm remains a sleeping beauty in the market, unnoticed by larger competitors.

Synonyms

takeover target
vssleeping beauty
  • Jargon
1 5.2

A company that another company or investor wants to buy

is not yet noticed by bidders or outside investors
target company
vssleeping beauty
  • Jargon
1 4.2

A company that another company wants to buy

is still unseen by bidders, not already chosen for purchase

How Attractive

takeover target
  • Jargon
1 5.2
sleeping beauty
  • Jargon
1 9.0
unnoticed
57 2.5

Surface Forms

sleeping beauty singular
sleeping beauties plural

Morphology

sleeping + beauty

The noun phrase is directly compositional: 'sleeping' modifies 'beauty', yielding the sense 'a beautiful person who is sleeping', which a B1 learner who knows both words can readily infer. While it can also evoke the fairy-tale character, that cultural reference does not obscure the literal, transparent combination and similar constructions occur cross-linguistically.

Etymology

Sleeping beauty may come from the old fairy tale about a princess who sleeps until a prince wakes her. The image of something sleeping but full of beauty explains why a sleeping beauty is a quiet company with hidden value that a buyer could 'wake'.