Sheep is Old English sceap, with the sc- that regularly became sh-. Its origin is a genuine mystery: there are no known relatives outside the West Germanic languages. Scandinavian does not have it — Danish says faar — and Gothic used lamb. The usual Indo-European word for the animal survives in English as ewe.
Sheep is the native half of the sheep-and-mutton pair, beside cow and beef, pig and pork, calf and veal. Its plural is also worth noticing: sheep, unchanged, which is an old Germanic pattern in which certain nouns simply did not mark the plural. Deer and swine behave the same way. Old Northumbrian actually had a plural scipo, but the levelled form won. The figurative uses are as old as the English record — sheep as a type of timidity, and as those under the guidance of a shepherd God.
sheep
(n.)
ruminant mammal of the genus
Ovis
, as a domestic species, one of the animals most useful to humans, Old English
sceap
,
scep
, Northumbrian
scap
, from West Germanic
*skæpan
(source also of Old Saxon
scap
, Old Frisian
skep
, Middle Low German
schap
, Middle Dutch
scaep
, Dutch
schaap
, Old High German
scaf
, German
Schaf
), a word of unknown origin. Not found in Scandinavian (Danish has
faar
for "sheep") or Gothic (which uses
lamb
), and with no known cognates outside Germanic. The more usual Indo-European word for the animal is represented in English by
ewe
.
The plural was leveled with the singular in Old English, but Old Northumbrian had a plural
scipo
. It has been used from Old English times as a type of timidity and figuratively of those under the guidance of God. The meaning "stupid, timid person" is attested from 1540s.
The image of the
wolf in sheep's clothing
was in Old English (from Matthew vii.15); that of
separating the sheep from the goats
is from Matthew xxv.33; the phrase itself by 1570s. To
count sheep
in a bid to induce sleep is recorded from 1854 but seems not to have been commonly written about until 1870s. It might simply be a type of a tedious activity, but an account of shepherd life from Australia from 1849 ["Sidney's Emigrant's Journal"] describes the night-shepherd ("hut-keeper") taking a count of the sheep regularly at the end of his shift to protect against being answerable for any animals later lost or killed.
Sheep's eyes
"loving looks" is attested from 1520s (compare West Frisian
skiepseach
, Dutch
schaapsoog
, German
Schafsauge
). A
sheep-biter
was "an ill-trained mongrel, a dog that worries sheep" (1540s) and had extended senses: a mutton-monger" (1590s); and "a whore-monger" (1610s, i.e. one who "chases
mutton
"); hence Shakespeare's
sheep-biting
"thieving, sneaky." An old London chronicle c. 1450 has
went to sheep-wash
for "were slain."
sheep came in through Old English, and its spelling follows that family's conventions.
How that family writes these sounds
| /ʃ/ | shship, sheep, shirt |
Placing it without the spelling
| the body, the farm, the weather, the family, the hundred commonest words | Old Englishknee, sheep, wind, daughter |
Old English in the spelling guide · guess another word's family