lamb

¹

[lam]

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.

verb (used without object)

1. to give birth to a lamb.

Lamb

²

[lam]

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.

lamb

¹

/ 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

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

/ 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

Lamb

³

/ læm /

noun

1. a title given to Christ in the New Testament

Other Word Forms

• lamblike adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of lamb¹

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

Word History and Origins

Origin of lamb¹

Old English lamb, from Germanic; compare German Lamm, Old High German and Old Norse lamb

Idioms and Phrases

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

Example Sentences

Wellington also ran out England international Lamb at the non-striker's end with a clever flick on to the stumps as Phoenix ended on 152-6.

From BBC

Film, he did, ad infinitum, particularly enjoying the spy genre in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” which garnered him his first Oscar nomination as lead actor in 2012, long before Jackson Lamb appeared on his radar.

From Los Angeles Times

Some people also jokingly compared it to Silence of the Lambs' villain Hannibal Lecter's restraint mask.

From BBC

Patchy approaches — “Rachel Getting Married” gets some dissection with minimal production detail, while “The Silence of the Lambs” gets extensive production detail with no film analysis — doesn’t help extract Demme’s thematic throughlines as a filmmaker.

From Los Angeles Times

Lamb was arrested Tuesday afternoon and is in custody in Sacramento County.

From Los Angeles Times

Related Words

• fish