Word.ws English Dictionary

sacred cows

sacred cows is the plural of sacred cow.

Meaning of sacred cow

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

Questions about sacred cows

What is sacred cows the plural of?
Sacred cows is the plural of sacred cow.

Words near sacred cows in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sacred cows (page history and authors); 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.

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