Word.ws English Dictionary

sacred cow

sacred cow noun: something which cannot be tampered with, or criticized, for fear of public outcry. A person, institution, belief system, etc. which, for no reason other than the demands of established social etiquette or popular opinion, should be accorded respect or reverence, and not touched, handled or examined too closely.

Noun

sacred cow (plural sacred cows)

  1. (idiomatic) Something which cannot be tampered with, or criticized, for fear of public outcry. A person, institution, belief system, etc. which, for no reason other than the demands of established social etiquette or popular opinion, should be accorded respect or reverence, and not touched, handled or examined too closely.
    • Many sacred cows were milked dry in an unbelievable series of outrageous events.1965 December, Phil Ochs, “That Was The Year That Weren't”, in Cavalier
    • Irreverence is our only sacred cow.1967, Paul Krassner, The Realist, issue 74, May 1967, front page tagline

Examples of sacred cow in a sentence

  • In my opinion, in order to save serious amounts of money, a number of 'sacred cows' will need slaying.2022 January 12, Sir Michael Holden, “Reform of the workforce or death by a thousand cuts?”, in RAIL, number 948, page 24:
  • And he [Nick Fuentes] can attack what was until recently one of the right’s last true sacred cows: Israel.2025 November 20, J. Oliver Conroy, “White nationalist Nick Fuentes is exposing a civil war among US Republicans: ‘We look like clowns’”...

Forms of sacred cow

pluralsacred cows

Origin of sacred cow

Originally American English (early 1900s), a reference to the elevated place of cows in Hinduism.

Questions about sacred cow

What does sacred cow mean?
Sacred cow means something which cannot be tampered with, or criticized, for fear of public outcry. A person, institution, belief system, etc. which, for no reason other than the demands of established social etiquette or popular opinion, should be accorded respect or reverence, and not touched, handled or examined too closely.
How do you use sacred cow in a sentence?
In my opinion, in order to save serious amounts of money, a number of 'sacred cows' will need slaying.
What part of speech is sacred cow?
Sacred cow is a noun.
What is the plural of sacred cow?
The plural of sacred cow is sacred cows.

Words near sacred cow in the dictionary

  1. sacred beans
  2. sacred beetle
  3. sacred beetles
  4. sacred bundle
  5. sacred bundles
  6. sacred cow
  7. sacred cows
  8. sacred eroticism
  9. sacred fig
  10. sacred figs
  11. sacred fir

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sacred cow (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-sacred cow.ogg.

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