Word.ws English Dictionary

sheepe

sheepe is the obsolete form of sheep.

Meaning of sheep

Noun

sheep (countable and uncountable, plural sheep or (nonstandard, humorous or childish) sheeps)

  1. (countable) A woolly ruminant of the genus Ovis.
    • There is much sad evidence, too, of the spoliation and dereliction of vanished industry: tips, slag-heaps and derelict colliery-screens among which the ubiquitous, nomad mountain sheep graze unconcernedly.1955 July, D. S. Barrie, “Railways of the Bridgend District”, in Railway Magazine, page 449
  2. (countable, strictly) A member of the domestic species Ovis aries, the most well-known species of Ovis.
  3. (countable) A timid, shy person who is easily led by others.
  4. (countable, plural) A religious adherent, a member of a congregation or religious community (compare flock).
    • And fools like me, who cross the sea and come to foreign lands / Ask the sheep, for their beliefs do you kill on God's command?1990, Dave Mustaine, "Holy Wars... The Punishment Due", Megadeth, Rust in Peace.
  5. (uncountable) Sheepskin leather.
  6. (countable, speech recognition) A person who is easily understood by a speech recognition system; contrasted with goat.

See all 7 meanings of sheep

Forms of sheepe

pluralsheepe

Questions about sheepe

What is sheepe the obsolete form of?
Sheepe is the obsolete form of sheep.

Words near sheepe in the dictionary

  1. sheepdog
  2. sheepdogged
  3. sheepdogging
  4. sheepdogs
  5. sheepdom
  6. sheepe
  7. Sheepeater
  8. Sheepeaters
  9. sheepfaced
  10. sheepflesh
  11. sheepfold

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sheepe (page history and authors); sheep (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: “sheepe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sheepe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.