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sheep

Pronunciation: /ˈʃiːp/

The English word “sheep” has 7 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A woolly ruminant of the genus Ovis.
  2. A member of the domestic species Ovis aries, the most well-known species of Ovis.
  3. A timid, shy person who is easily led by others.
  4. A religious adherent, a member of a congregation or religious community (compare flock).
  5. Sheepskin leather.
  6. A person who is easily understood by a speech recognition system; contrasted with goat.
  7. A gullible person.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English schep, schepe, from Anglian Old English sċēp (West Saxon sċēap), from Proto-West Germanic *skāp, from Proto-Germanic *skēpą, of unknown origin. Perhaps from the same Scythian word (compare Ossetian цӕу (cæw, “goat”), Persian چپش (čapiš, “yearling goat”)) which was borrowed into Albanian as cjap, sqap (“buck”) and into Slavic (compare Polish cap). After Kroonen,…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.