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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

lamb.

A young sheep; especially, one younger than nine months.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈlæm/Received-Pronunciation/ˈlam/British, Northern-England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales/ˈlæm/Canada, General-American[ˈlæm]

  1. A young sheep; especially, one younger than nine months.

    countable · uncountable
    Mary had a little lamb, its fleece as white as snow.
    Mark and Mark have raised some lambs for market, and they won a blue ribbon for quality at the fair.

  2. A young goat; a kid.

    countable · obsolete · uncountable

  3. The flesh of a lamb used as food; (sometimes loosely) the flesh of a sheep of any age used as food.

    uncountable

  4. A person who is meek, docile, and easily led.

    countable · figuratively · uncountable

  5. Lambskin.

    countable · uncountable

  6. A simple, unsophisticated person.

    countable · uncountable

  7. One who ignorantly speculates on the stock exchange and is victimized.

    countable · slang · uncountable

  8. A fan of American singer, songwriter, actress, and record producer Mariah Carey (born 1969).

    countable · slang · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English lamb, from Old English lamb, from Proto-West Germanic *lamb, from Proto-Germanic *lambaz, probably from Proto-Indo-European *h₁l̥h₁onbʰos, enlargement of *h₁elh₁én, ultimately from *h₁el-. See also Dutch lam, German Lamm, Bavarian Lamperl, Danish lam, Swedish lamm, Finnish lammas, Scottish Gaelic lon (“elk”), Ancient Greek ἔλαφος (élaphos, “red deer”). More at elk.

verb/ˈlæm/Received-Pronunciation/ˈlam/British, Northern-England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales/ˈlæm/Canada, General-American[ˈlæm]

  1. Of a sheep, to give birth.

    intransitive

  2. To assist (sheep) to give birth.

    intransitive · transitive
    The shepherd was up all night, lambing her young ewes.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English lamb, from Old English lamb, from Proto-West Germanic *lamb, from Proto-Germanic *lambaz, probably from Proto-Indo-European *h₁l̥h₁onbʰos, enlargement of *h₁elh₁én, ultimately from *h₁el-. See also Dutch lam, German Lamm, Bavarian Lamperl, Danish lam, Swedish lamm, Finnish lammas, Scottish Gaelic lon (“elk”), Ancient Greek ἔλαφος (élaphos, “red deer”). More at elk.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.