{i} (Greek Mythology) Cypriot king who fell in love with the statue he had carved of a woman (who later was brought to life by Aphrodite); play written by George Bernard Shaw (1912)
a play by George Bernard Shaw in which Professor Henry Higgins teaches a poor Cockney woman, Eliza Doolittle, how to speak and behave like an upper class lady. The play was made into a musical (=a play that uses singing and dancing to tell a story) in 1956 and a successful film musical in 1964, both called My Fair Lady (1913). In Greek mythology, a king of Cyprus who fell in love with a statue of Aphrodite. The goddess took pity on him and brought the statue to life, and he married her. In some versions of the myth Pygmalion was a sculptor who carved the statue himself because he was disgusted with the faults of ordinary women, and when it was brought to life he gave it the name Galatea