Jump To:

• lamb
  lamb

  noun

  a young sheep.
• Lamb
  Lamb

  noun

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

lamb

¹ American  

[lam] / læm /

noun

lambs plural

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 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.

---

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

---

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

---

Lamb ³ British  

/ læm /

noun

1. a title given to Christ in the New Testament

---

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.

---

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• lamblike
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• lambs
  plural

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

See Examples For:

lamb Lamb lambs

For something even more dramatic, La Tienda’s double-frenched racks of lamb make a hell of a centerpiece.

From Salon ● Jul. 12, 2026

Kebabs that were meant to be "70% lamb" came back as showing "less than 10% sheep".

From BBC ● Jul. 2, 2026

On one production line, investigators found the same large trays of doner meat being emptied into two different packets to go to shops - one labelled as "70% lamb" and one labelled as "50% lamb".

From BBC ● Jul. 2, 2026

Everyone is allergic to beef and other meats such as pork, lamb and venison, but not to non-mammal meats such as poultry or fish.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026

The sight of these things disappointed her so greatly that even the lamb couldn’t cheer her, so the man asked her what was wrong.

From "Bone Gap" by Laura Ruby

Lamb Weston expects fiscal 2027 adjusted earnings of $2.95 to $3.25 a share, ahead of analyst expectations of $2.93 a share.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

Lamb Weston logged higher sales in its fiscal fourth quarter, as volume growth in North America helped offset continued cost inflation and geopolitical volatility, which weighed on international sales.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

Lamb is virtually guaranteed a victory in November, which means that Congress will indeed have more “cowboy hats and belt buckles.”

From Slate ● Jul. 23, 2026

City also have 17-year-old Teddie Lamb, who moved from Leyton Orient a year ago and was the top scorer in the Premier League U18 competition last season.

From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2026

The godswife would be walking among the other Lamb Men, in the long column of slaves.

From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin

As children, cattle and lambs happily commune with bears, lions and wolves in the foreground, the background depicts William Penn making a treaty with Tamanend, chief of the Lenape Nation, and founding Pennsylvania.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 3, 2026

The paintings featured include scenes of unassuming houses visited by otherworldly guests, dead-eyed office workers, gravity-defying displays and lambs being led to the slaughter.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2026

Hundreds of knitted teddy bears, lambs, dogs and rabbits have been placed in Hartford, Cheshire, for children, with just a gift tag signed from an elusive "Granny H".

From BBC ● Jun. 9, 2026

In April, a mother spoke of her horror after her son came across a number of dead lambs while out litter picking near the village of Cappagh.

From BBC ● Jun. 4, 2026

If there’s a stream gurgling under a bridge on the road, birds singing and cows mooing and lambs baaing, that’s better than any band in a film.

From "Angela's Ashes: A Memoir" by Frank McCourt

Related Words

• fish