ugly duckling

"It is an incredibly difficult thing to go from turning that person from an ugly duckling into a swan."

“One can always be the little ugly duckling who sulks in the corner. We know we’ll have lots of those,” the police chief said.

The bewitchingly fragrant fruit — a relative of apples and pears — does go through an ugly duckling phase, Walden acknowledges.

Despite being regarded as an ugly duckling by the foreign policy establishment, USIA-led public diplomacy efforts played a key role in achieving several important foreign policy objectives.

“An Alpine Symphony” is something of an ugly duckling in the orchestral repertory — or, given its scale, an ugly elephant.