mutton dressed as lamb
mutton dressed as lamb noun: a middle-aged or elderly woman dressed in a style more suited to a young woman, especially if in a deliberate attempt to appear young.
Noun
mutton dressed as lamb (uncountable)
- A middle-aged or elderly woman dressed in a style more suited to a young woman, especially if in a deliberate attempt to appear young.
- Cully Barnaby: Dad, that old lady, the mutton dressed as lamb. Do you know her?
DCI Tom Barnaby: That's a terrible thing to say... even though it's true. No, I don't.1998 April 22, Caroline Graham et al., “Faithful unto Death”, in Midsomer Murders - In one of the rare cinematic depictions of an older woman as sexually attractive and active, Moreau also contributes to the end of Syl′s innocence by seducing him in the summer house. No mutton dressed as lamb could have done better!2003, Elizabeth W. Markson, “Chapter Three: The Female Aging Body Through Film”, in Christopher A. Faircloth, editor, Aging Bodies: Images and Everyday Experience, page 85
- Cully Barnaby: Dad, that old lady, the mutton dressed as lamb. Do you know her?
Examples of mutton dressed as lamb in a sentence
- Elegant, slightly chic, but not mutton dressed as lamb.2007, L. H. Maynard, M. P. N. Sims, Demon Eyes, New York: Dorchester Publishing, page 224:
- South African women are also so scared of looking like mutton dressed as lamb that we have plenty of women looking like lamb dressed as mutton!2009, Dr John Chibaya Mbuya, Bulelwa Muphela, Grooming and Ettiquette for Corporate Men and Women, unnumbered page:
Forms of mutton dressed as lamb
| alternative form | mutton dressed up as lamb |
|---|
Origin of mutton dressed as lamb
A metaphorical sense of mutton (“unattractive older woman”) being dressed (clothed) as lamb (“a younger attractive woman”) and also a pun on mutton (“meat from old sheep”) being dressed (prepared) as lamb (“meat from young sheep”), related to obsolete lamb-fashion.
Questions about mutton dressed as lamb
- What does mutton dressed as lamb mean?
- Mutton dressed as lamb means a middle-aged or elderly woman dressed in a style more suited to a young woman, especially if in a deliberate attempt to appear young.
- How do you use mutton dressed as lamb in a sentence?
- Elegant, slightly chic, but not mutton dressed as lamb.
- What part of speech is mutton dressed as lamb?
- Mutton dressed as lamb is a noun.
Words near mutton dressed as lamb in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mutton dressed as lamb (page history and authors). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-mutton dressed as lamb.ogg.
Cite this entry: “mutton dressed as lamb.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mutton_dressed_as_lamb. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.