What is "belle"

Belle \Belle\ (b[e^]l), n. [F. belle, fem. of bel, beau, beautiful, fine. See Beau.] A young lady of superior beauty and attractions; a handsome lady, or one who attracts notice in society; a fair lady.

"beautiful woman well-dressed; reigning beauty," 1620s, from French belle, from Old French bele, from Latin bella, fem. of bellus "beautiful, fair" (see bene-).

n. An attractive woman.

n. a young woman who is the most charming and beautiful of several rivals; "she was the belle of the ball"

Belle may refer to:

Belle was the first computer defined for the sole purpose of chess playing. The machine was developed by Joe Condon (hardware) and Ken Thompson (software) at Bell Labs in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the strongest computer chess systems of its time, Belle achieved a USCF rating of 2250, and officially became the first master-level machine in 1983. It won the ACM North American Computer Chess Championships of 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, and 1986. It also won the 1980 World Computer Chess Championship.

In its final incarnation, Belle was composed of a PDP-11/23 with a LSI-11 processor and many custom boards. There were three custom boards for move generation, four custom boards for position evaluation, and one board with custom microcode which controlled the whole thing. The computer also had one megabyte of commercial memory which was used for transposition tables. At the end of its career, Belle was donated to the Smithsonian Institution. The overall architecture of Belle was used for the initial designs of ChipTest, the progenitor of IBM Deep Blue.

In 1982, Belle was confiscated by the US State Department at Kennedy Airport when heading to the USSR to compete in a computer chess tournament; its shipping was considered to be an illegal transfer of advanced technology to a foreign country. It took over a month and a $600 fine to get Belle out of customs. Thompson learned that the reason for confiscation was the attached HP 2640 terminal which had internal VLSI memory and a microprocessor.

Belle is an Australian design magazine, covering interior design and architecture as well as a raft of other home improvement content.

"Belle" is a 1997 song performed by the Francophone singers Patrick Fiori, Daniel Lavoie and Garou, from the musical Notre Dame de Paris. Released as a single in 1998, it was a hit in France and Belgium, topping the charts for many months. To date, the song is one of the best-selling singles of all time in these countries.

Belle is a 1973 Belgian-French drama film directed by André Delvaux. It was entered into the 1973 Cannes Film Festival.

Belle is the fourth studio album by New Zealand singer-song writer Bic Runga.

The album was released in New Zealand on 14 November 2011, while in Ireland the album was released earlier on 11 November 2011 under Sony Music Ireland.

It is her first studio album in six years and the first to feature a producer, Kody Nielson and material co-written with other songwriters. The album's title is derived from the theme song of the French television series Belle et Sébastien which Runga also covers on the album.

Belle is a fictional character who appears in Walt Disney Pictures' 30th animated feature film Beauty and the Beast (1991). Originally voiced by American actress and singer Paige O'Hara – who auditioned for the role five times after first reading about it in The New York Times – Belle is the non-conforming daughter of an eccentric inventor. Ostracized by her village peers due to her intelligence and love of books, Belle yearns to abandon her uneventful life in favor of adventure. When her father Maurice is imprisoned by a cold-hearted beast, Belle offers him her own freedom in exchange for her father's, and eventually learns to love the Beast despite his outward appearance.

Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg commissioned Beauty and the Beast as an animated musical with a strong heroine, and hired first-time screenwriter Linda Woolverton to write it. Basing her on the heroine of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's fairy tale " Beauty and the Beast", Woolverton adapted Belle into a stronger and less passive character for the film. Inspired by the women's rights movement, Woolverton wanted Belle to be a unique Disney heroine different from The Little Mermaid's popular Ariel, and thus deliberately conceived the character as a feminist in an effort to avoid the criticism Disney had long been receiving due to the studio's reputation of depicting its female characters as victims.

Belle's strength and love of reading was inspired by American actress Katharine Hepburn's performance as Jo March in the film Little Women (1933), while the writers instilled the adventure-seeking heroine with goals and aspirations beyond romance. However, the story artists and animators often disagreed with Woolverton's liberated vision for the character. Animated by James Baxter and Mark Henn, the former of whom based the character's graceful gait on those of impressionist Edgar Degas' ballerinas, Belle's European facial features were inspired by those of British actresses Vivien Leigh and Audrey Hepburn. Several additional Hollywood actresses inspired Belle's appearance, including Natalie Wood, Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly.

Belle has garnered widespread acclaim from film critics who appreciated the character's bravery, intelligence and independence. Reception towards her feminism, however, has been more mixed, with commentators accusing the character's actions of being romance-oriented. The fifth Disney Princess, Belle is often ranked among the franchise's best. Highly regarded as one of Disney's strongest examples of a feminist character, critics agree that Belle helped spearhead a generation of independent film heroines while changing the reputation of a Disney princess. Also one of Disney's most iconic characters, Belle was the only animated heroine nominated for the American Film Institute's greatest heroes in film ranking. The character also appears in the film's several sequels and spin-offs, as well as her own live-action television series. American actress Susan Egan originated the role of Belle in the Broadway musical adaptation of the film, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

"Belle" is a song written by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman for Walt Disney Pictures' 30th animated feature film Beauty and the Beast (1991). Originally recorded by American actress and singer Paige O'Hara and American actor Richard White, "Belle", a mid-tempo French and classical music-inspired song, incorporates both Broadway and musical theatre elements. The film's first song and opening number, "Belle" appears during ''Beauty and the Beast ''as a large scale operetta-style production number that introduces the film's heroine Belle, considered a book-loving nonconformist by the townspeople of the village, who has grown weary of the provincial life in which she is supposed to live, and Gaston, the film's narcissistic villain who wishes to desire her hand in marriage despite Belle's rejections.

"Belle" has been universally acclaimed by film and music critics. Musically, the song has been compared to various musical numbers from the musical films '' West Side Story ''(1961) and '' The Sound of Music ''(1965), as well as the Broadway musicals Fiddler on the Roof and She Loves Me. At the 64th Academy Awards in 1992, "Belle" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, but ultimately lost to the film's title song''. ''The song was similarly featured in the Broadway musical based on the film, originally performed by American actress and singer Susan Egan.

Belle is a 2013 British period drama film directed by Amma Asante, written by Misan Sagay and produced by Damian Jones. It stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, Sam Reid, Matthew Goode, Emily Watson, Sarah Gadon, Tom Felton and James Norton.

The film is inspired by the 1779 painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle beside her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray, at Kenwood House, which was commissioned by their great-uncle, William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, then Lord Chief Justice of England. Very little is known about the life of Dido Belle, who was born in the West Indies and was the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of Mansfield's nephew. She is found living in poverty by her father and entrusted to the care of Mansfield and his wife. The fictional film centres on Dido's relationship with an aspiring lawyer; it is set at a time of legal significance, as a court case is heard on what became known as the Zong massacre, when slaves were thrown overboard from a slave ship and the owner filed with his insurance company for the losses. Lord Mansfield rules on this case in England's Court of King's Bench in 1786, in a decision seen to contribute to the abolition of slavery in Britain.

Belle is a surname which may refer to:

• Alexis Simon Belle (1674–1734), French portrait artist
• Albert Belle (born 1966), American retired Major League Baseball player
• Anomie Belle, American singer, musician, composer and social activist
• Camilla Belle (born 1986), American actress
• Cortez Belle (born 1983), English footballer
• David Belle (born 1973), French founder of Parkour, actor, film choreographer and stunt coordinator
• Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761–1804) born a slave and great-niece of Lord Mansfield
• Gerard van Belle (born 1968), American astronomer
• Henri Belle (born January 25, 1989), Cameroonian footballer
• Lexi Belle (born 1987), American pornographic actor
• Regina Belle (born 1963), American singer and songwriter
• Shawn Belle (born 1985), Canadian hockey player

Belle is a French feminine given name meaning " Beautiful". It may refer to:

People:

• Belle Baker (1893–1957), American singer and actress
• Belle Baranceanu (1902–1988), American artist
• Belle Benchley (1882–1972), American director of the San Diego Zoo from 1927 to 1953
• Belle Bennett (1891–1932), American stage and screen actress
• Belle Brezing (1860–1940), American brothel owner, believed to be the model for Belle Watling in Gone with the Wind
• Belle Chrystall (1910–2003), British actress
• Belle Cole (1845–1905), American singer
• Belle Cooledge (1884–1955), American politician, first female mayor of Sacramento, California
• Belle Gunness (1859–1908), Norwegian-American female serial killer
• Belle Kinney Scholz (1890–1959), Euro-American sculptor
• Belle Goshorn MacCorkle (1841–1923), American former First Lady of West Virginia
• Belle Mitchell (1889–1979), American film actress
• Belle Moskowitz (1877–1933), political advisor to New York Governor and 1928 presidential candidate Al Smith
• Belle Reynolds (1840–1937), American heroine of the American Civil War

Characters from or based on Beauty and the Beast:

• Belle, from the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast
• Belle (Disney), from the 1991 Disney film Beauty and the Beast, based on the fairy tale
• Belle (Once Upon a Time) (maiden name French, married name Gold), a character from the ABC television series Once Upon a Time

Other fictional characters:

• Belle, from Charles Dickens's holiday-themed novel A Christmas Carol
• Belle Black, from the NBC soap opera Days of our Lives
• Belle Dingle, from the ITV soap opera Emmerdale
• Belle Dupree, from the CBS sitcom Alice
• Belle Taylor, from the Seven Network soap opera Home and Away
• Belle Watling, from the novel Gone with the Wind and the film adaptation
• Belle the Sleeping Car, in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Starlight Express
• Belle, one of the title characters of Belle et Sébastien, a French children's novel by Cécile Aubry
• Belle, one of Snoopy's siblings from the comic strip Peanuts
• Belle, a big blue fire fighting engine in Thomas & Friends

Belle Gold (née French), briefly known as Lacey, is a fictional character in ABC's television series Once Upon a Time. She is portrayed by Emilie de Ravin, who became a series regular in the second season and onwards after making recurring appearances in the first season, and has become a fan favorite since her debut. She is both based on the character from Beauty and the Beast by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, and the Disney princess of the 1991 film of the same name.