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• lamb
  lamb

  noun

  a young sheep.
• Lamb
  Lamb

  noun

  Charles Elia, 1775–1834, English essayist and critic.

lamb

¹ American  

[lam] / læm /

noun

1. a young sheep.

2. the meat of a young sheep.

3. a person who is gentle, meek, innocent, etc..

   Their little daughter is such a lamb.

4. a person who is easily cheated or outsmarted, especially an inexperienced speculator.

5. the Lamb, Christ.

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verb (used without object)

1. to give birth to a lamb.

Lamb ² American  

[lam] / læm /

noun

1. Charles Elia, 1775–1834, English essayist and critic.

2. Harold A., 1892–1962, U.S. novelist.

3. Mary Ann, 1764–1847, English author who wrote in collaboration with her brother Charles Lamb.

4. William, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, 1779–1848, English statesman: prime minister 1834, 1835–41.

5. Willis E(ugene), Jr., 1913–2008, U.S. physicist: Nobel Prize 1955.

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lamb ¹ British  

/ læm /

noun

1. the young of a sheep

2. the meat of a young sheep

3. a person, esp a child, who is innocent, meek, good, etc

4. a person easily deceived

5. 1. without resistance

   2. innocently

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verb

1. Also: lamb down.  (intr) (of a ewe) to give birth

2. (tr; used in the passive) (of a lamb) to be born

3. (intr) (of a shepherd) to tend the ewes and newborn lambs at lambing time

Lamb ² British  

/ læm /

noun

1. Charles, pen name Elia. 1775–1834, English essayist and critic. He collaborated with his sister Mary on Tales from Shakespeare (1807). His other works include Specimens of English Dramatic Poets (1808) and the largely autobiographical essays collected in Essays of Elia (1823; 1833)

2. William. See (2nd Viscount) Melbourne 2

3. Willis Eugene. 1913–2008, US physicist. He detected the small difference in energy between two states of the hydrogen atom ( Lamb shift ). Nobel prize for physics 1955

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Lamb ³ British  

/ læm /

noun

1. a title given to Christ in the New Testament

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lamb Idioms  

1. see hanged for a sheep (as a lamb); in two shakes (of a lamb's tail); like a lamb to the slaughter.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• lamblike
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of lamb

First recorded before 900; Middle English, Old English; cognate with Dutch lam, German Lamm, Old Norse, Gothic lamb; akin to Greek élaphos “deer”; see elk

Explanation

A lamb is a baby sheep. Most female sheep, or ewes, give birth to one or two lambs each spring. Lambs are so cute that they tend to show up in nursery rhymes — as in "Mary had a little lamb." Awwww. When you're petting a newborn sheep, you can call it a lamb, but if you're eating meat that comes from this same animal, it's a mass noun, lamb without the a. The word can be a verb too, as when a ewe lambs, or gives birth, and it's been a common pet name, especially for a young child, since at least the eleventh century: "Okay, time for bed, lamb!"

Example Sentences

Lamb greeted reliever Cooper Powell with a three-run home run over the right field bleachers in the third inning.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 1, 2026

Lamb, who singled in the fifth, added another two-run double in the ninth.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 1, 2026

After taking a 2-0 lead on Adrian Lopez’s two-run home run, Lamb capped the five-run first inning with a 421-foot, three-run homer over the right-field bleachers at Blue Bell Park.

From Los Angeles Times • May 31, 2026

Actor Larry Lamb has said he was "very lucky" to be able to work on the sets of Gavin and Stacey and EastEnders at the same time.

From BBC • May 30, 2026

She quoted to him from Rumi; she sang what she knew of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," mixing it up with "Baa Baa, Black Sheep."

From "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez

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