lamb

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.

• IPA^(key): /læm/
  • (æ-tensing) IPA^(key): [leəm]

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æm

lamb (countable and uncountable, plural lambs or (both dialectal) lamber or lambren)

2. A young sheep.

   Mary had a little lamb, its fleece as white as snow.

   Synonym: sheepling

3. (obsolete) A young goat; a kid.
   • The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], 1611, →OCLC, Exodus 12:5: “Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:”
5. (uncountable) The flesh of a lamb or sheep used as food.

   Hypernym: meat

6. (figuratively) A person who is meek, docile and easily led.
7. Lambskin.
   • 1934, Kay Boyle, My Next Bride, Virago, published 1986, page 8:

     They were as alike as prisoners, dressed in black silk waists and fitted skirts, with shawls of crimped black lamb across their shoulders.

8. A simple, unsophisticated person.
9. (finance, slang) One who ignorantly speculates on the stock exchange and is victimized.
10. (slang) A fan of American singer, songwriter, actress, and record producer Mariah Carey (born 1969).

    Holonym: Lambily

    Alternative form: Lamb

    • 2003, Bust, page 88:

      Part of me revels in the campiness of Mariah’s butterfly metaphors and puppies-and-kittens existence. […] But I also genuinely love her music, including this album. I’m one of her lambs.

    • 2010 February 15, Greg Kot, “Mimi cuts loose: Mariah Carey concert at Chicago Theatre shows that the diva can laugh at herself”, in Chicago Tribune, 163rd year, number 46, section 3, page 6:

      Her latest album, “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel,” is her best work yet, a warmer and more subtle album that makes her more relatable to those of us who aren’t Mariah die-hards—or “lambs,” as she refers to them.

    • 2019 January 3, Rich Juzwiak, “In Praise of Their Diva”, in The New York Times, section D, page 1:

      This year, Ms. Carey debuted a new Las Vegas revue, and, to celebrate, a group of 36 “lambs,” mostly in their 30s and 40s, boarded a party bus and cruised the Vegas strip for about three hours.

    • 2020 February 25, Chris Azzopardi, “I Love You (But Do You Love Mariah Carey?)”, in The New York Times‎^[1]:

      But when I saw Mariah in Detroit last year during the Caution World Tour, I was a proud lamb in my tour T-shirt, my very adult body suddenly transformed into my 14-year-old self when she emerged onstage.

    • 2022, “Mariah Carey releases her exclusive Pride merchandise”, in WRMF‎^[2]:

      Pride Month begins June 1, and Mariah Carey is giving her lambs plenty of new clothes to celebrate.

    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:lamb.

lamb (third-person singular simple present lambs, present participle lambing, simple past and past participle lambed)

1. (intransitive) Of a sheep, to give birth.
2. (transitive or intransitive) To assist (sheep) to give birth.

   The shepherd was up all night, lambing her young ewes.

• ALBM, BAML, BLAM, LBMA, balm, blam

From Old Norse lamb, from Proto-Germanic *lambaz.

lamb n (genitive singular lambs, plural lomb)

1. lamb (both the animal and meat)
2. kid (baby goat)
3. (playing cards, stýrivolt) seven of the chosen cards (trump seven)

• gimburlamb (female lamb)
• veðurlamb (male lamb)

lamb

1. romanization of 𐌻𐌰𐌼𐌱

From Old Norse lamb, from Proto-Germanic *lambaz.

• IPA^(key): /lamp/
• Rhymes: -amp

lamb n (genitive singular lambs, nominative plural lömb)

1. a lamb

• launa lambið gráa
• ljúfur sem lamb
• vatna lömbum (compare the Old Norse krjúpa at keldu)

• lom, lomb, loomb
• lambe, lame, lamme, lombe (mainly Late Middle English)
• loumbe (West Midlands)

From Old English lamb, from Proto-West Germanic *lamb, from Proto-Germanic *lambaz.

Pronunciations with Old English lengthening before /mb/ were probably less common than in comb, womb due to levelling from the plural lambre, lambren, where such lengthening did not occur (though the spellings lamb in the Ormulum and loomb in the Wycliffite Bible indicate an unlevelled form with lengthening).

• IPA^(key): /lam(b)/, /laːm(b)/, /lɔm(b)/, /lɔːm(b)/

lamb (plural lambren or lambre or lambes)

1. A lamb, its meat, or its skin.
2. A Christian believer.

• English: lamb
• Scots: lam, lamb
• Yola: lhawm, lowem

• “lō̆mb, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

From Old Norse lamb.

lamb n (definite singular lambet, definite singular dative lambe, indefinite plural lamb or lomb, definite plural lambi or lombi, definite plural dative lambom or lombom)

1. a lamb (young sheep); (pre-1938) alternative form of lam
2. (by extension, Christianity, figurative) Christ as sacrificial lamb

• lambekjøt
• påskelamb (“Passover lamb, Paschal Lamb”)

• lemb, lomb, lomber

From Proto-Germanic *lambaz.

• IPA^(key): /lɑmb/

lamb n (nominative plural lambru)

1. lamb

West Saxon: Strong z-stem:

Anglian:

• Middle English: lamb, lomb, lambe
  • English: lamb
  • Scots: lam, lamb

From Proto-West Germanic *lamb, see also Old Saxon lamb, Old English lamb, Old Norse lamb, Gothic 𐌻𐌰𐌼𐌱 (lamb).

lamb n

1. lamb

• Middle High German: lamp, lam
  • Cimbrian: lamp
  • German: Lamm
  • Luxembourgish: Lamm
  • Vilamovian: łamm
  • Yiddish: לאַם (lam)

• Köbler, Gerhard, Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, (6. Auflage) 2014
• Joseph Wright, An Old High German Primer, Second Edition

From Proto-Germanic *lambaz.

lamb n (genitive lambs, plural lǫmb)

1. a lamb

From Proto-West Germanic *lamb.

lamb n

1. lamb

• Low German: Lamm