Word.ws English Dictionary

lamb

UK/ˈlæm/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/ˈlam/

lamb noun: a young sheep; especially, one younger than nine months.

lamb: a young sheep; especially, one younger than nine months
Image: Keven Law, Los Angeles, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

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

  1. A young sheep; especially, one younger than nine months.
    • 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.
    Synonyms:
    sheepling
  2. (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:”
  3. (uncountable) The flesh of a lamb used as food; (sometimes loosely) the flesh of a sheep of any age used as food.
  4. (figuratively) A person who is meek, docile, and easily led.
    • Near-synonym: sheep
    Synonyms:
    sheep
  5. Lambskin.
    • They were as alike as prisoners, dressed in black silk waists and fitted skirts, with shawls of crimped black lamb across their shoulders.1934, Kay Boyle, My Next Bride, Virago, published 1986, page 8
  6. A simple, unsophisticated person.
  7. (slang) One who ignorantly speculates on the stock exchange and is victimized.
  8. (slang) A fan of American singer, songwriter, actress, and record producer Mariah Carey (born 1969).
    • 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.2003, Bust, page 88
    • 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.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

Verb

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. (intransitive, transitive) To assist (sheep) to give birth.
    • The shepherd was up all night, lambing her young ewes.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Lamb

Lamb (countable and uncountable, plural Lambs)

  1. A surname from Middle English.
  2. An unincorporated community in Craig Township, Switzerland County, Indiana, United States.
  3. An extinct town in Marion County, Missouri, United States.
  4. An islet (small island) in the Firth of Forth, East Lothian council area, Scotland (OS grid ref NT5386).

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Lamb

the Lamb

  1. Jesus; the Lamb of God
    • And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of...1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Revelation 12:10-11
    • (See St. Paul's epistles, and the early Fathers.) And we have the expression "washed in the blood of the Lamb" adopted into the Christian Church.1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., published 1921, page 40
  2. The constellation and zodiacal sign Aries.
    • The Fish, His Church in union bound;
      The Lamb, once slain, but now enthroned;
      The Bull the victory shall gain;
      The Twins, Divine and human reign.1862, [Frances Rolleston], Mazzaroth, or, The Constellations: Part III, London: Rivingtons, page 7
    • The lamb slain was called the Paschal Lamb. But what was that lamb? Evidently not an earthly lamb — (though certainly the earthly lambs on the hillsides were just then ready to be killed and eaten) — but the heavenly Lamb, which was slain or sacrificed when the Lord "passed over" the equator and...1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., published 1921, page 40

Noun (2) capitalized: Lamb

Lamb (plural Lambs)

  1. (slang) Alternative letter-case form of lamb (“a fan of Mariah Carey”).
    • Mariah Carey’s memoir opens with the great line: “I refuse to acknowledge time, famously so.” As if to establish the rules of the book, then add, with a toss of hair, but you knew that. Most readers of The Meaning of Mariah Carey, which the record-smashing songstress wrote with Michaela Angela...2020 September 29, Mary Sollosi, “The Meaning of Mariah Carey is a compelling account of suffering and survival: Review”, in Entertainment Weekly
    • Similarly, although critics panned Glitter for being ‘an unintentionally hilarious compendium of time-tested cinematic clichés that illustrates the chasm between hopeful imitation and successful duplication,’ as the New York Times (Van Gelder 2001) put it, during the #JusticeForGlitter campaign...2020, Rebecca Coleman, “The G-Word: Film, Fantasy and Afro-Fabulative Futures”, in Glitterworlds: The Future Politics of a Ubiquitous Thing, Goldsmiths Press, →ISBN, page 118

Noun (3) capitalized: LAMB

LAMB (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of lentigines, atrial myxomas, mucocutaneous myxomas, and blue naevi.

lamb meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Bengali

lamb in Hindi

young sheep
बर्रा barrā, मेमना memnā

lamb in Tamil

ஆட்டுக்குட்டி

lamb in Marathi

young sheep
कोकरू kokrū

lamb in Bengali

মেষশাবক, মেষশাবককে
More languagesFewer languages
lamb in Telugu
గొర్రెపిల్ల
lamb in Malayalam
ആട്ടിൻകുട്ടി, ആട്ടിൻകുട്ടിയെ
lamb in Kannada
ಕುರಿಮರಿ, ಕುರಿಮರಿಯು, ಕುರಿಮರಿಯನ್ನು
lamb in Punjabi
ਲੇਲਾ lelā
lamb in Gujarati
ઘેટાંનું બચ્ચું
lamb in Odia
ମେଷଶାବକ
lamb in Nepali
ल्याम्ब
lamb in Tagalog
kordero, tupa
lamb in Arabic
حَمَل ḥamal, خَرُوف ḵarūf, لَحْم اَلضَّأْن laḥm aḍ-ḍaʔn
lamb in Malay
anak biri-biri
lamb in Indonesian
anak domba, cempe
lamb in Persian
بره, گوسفند gusfand
lamb in Vietnamese
cừu con, cừu non
lamb in Myanmar
သိုးကလေး sui:ka.le:, သိုးသား sui:sa:
Kashmiri
چھِرٕ chirụ

Examples of lamb in a sentence

  • 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.2019 January 3, Rich Juzwiak, “In Praise of Their Diva”, in The New York Times, section D, page 1:
  • Pride Month begins June 1, and Mariah Carey is giving her lambs plenty of new clothes to celebrate.2022, “Mariah Carey releases her exclusive Pride merchandise”, in WRMF:

All 40 example sentences with lamb

Synonyms of lamb

Forms of lamb

Noun
plurallambs
plurallambren
pluralLambs
plural (dialectal)lamber
Verb
third-person singular presentlambs
present participlelambing
past participlelambed
pastlambed
Proper noun
pluralLambs

Plural of lamb: lambs

Origin of 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.

1. From Middle English lamb as a nickname. 2. From a short form of Lambert. 3. Reduced Anglicized form of Irish Ó Luain. 4. Possibly also a translation of French agneau.

See Lamb of God. See also lamb.

Words formed from lamb

Phrases with lamb

4 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with lamb

47 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about lamb

What does lamb mean?
Lamb means a young sheep; especially, one younger than nine months.
What is lamb in Hindi?
Lamb in Hindi is बर्रा (barrā), मेमना (memnā). See Lamb meaning in Hindi.
How do you use lamb in a sentence?
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.
What part of speech is lamb?
Lamb can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce lamb?
Lamb is pronounced /ˈlæm/ (UK).
What is the plural of lamb?
The plural of lamb is lambs.

Words near lamb in the dictionary

  1. Lamay
  2. Lamays
  3. Lamaze
  4. Lamaze technique
  5. Lamaze techniques
  6. lamb
  7. Lamb County
  8. lamb down
  9. lamb fries
  10. Lamb of God
  11. lamb of Tartary

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lamb (page history and authors); Lamb (page history and authors); LAMB (page history and authors); lamb (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lamb (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lamb (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lamb (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lamb (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lamb (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lamb (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lamb (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-lamb.ogg.

Cite this entry: “lamb.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lamb. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.