Jack and the Bean ‧ stalk /ˌdʒæk ənd ðə ˈbiːnstɔːk/ BrE AmE ( also ˌJack the ˈGiant-ˌkiller )
a ↑ fairy tale (=old story for children) about a boy called Jack who sells his mother’s cow for some magic beans. His mother angrily throws these beans out of the window, but by the next day they have grown into a tall BEANSTALK (=the main stem of a bean plant) . Jack climbs up it into the clouds, where he finds a ↑ giant 's castle. He enters it and finds a magic ↑ hen (=a female chicken) that produces golden eggs. The giant notices Jack, saying ‘Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman’, but Jack manages to escape, stealing the hen, and goes back down the beanstalk. The giant tries to follow him, but when Jack arrives back on the ground he cuts down the beanstalk, the giant falls and dies, and Jack becomes rich as a result of the golden eggs. In the UK, this story is often used in ↑ pantomime s .