Word.ws English Dictionary

Soay

Soay noun: a primitive breed of domestic sheep descended from feral sheep on the island of Soay, Scotland.

soay: a primitive breed of domestic sheep descended from feral sheep on the island of Soay, Scotland
Image: Evelyn Simak, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

Soay (plural Soays)

  1. A primitive breed of domestic sheep descended from feral sheep on the island of Soay, Scotland.
    • These apparently wild Soay sheep have bred on the island for centuries, virtually untended by Man. They are a relic of primitive domestic sheep, little improved from their wild progenitors.1961 August 3, Peter Jewell, The wild sheep of St Kilda, New Scientist, No. 246, page 268
    • We first discuss a multiyear study on Soay sheep (Ovis aries) and red deer (Cervus elaphus) that has successfully yielded a sophisticated understanding of population regulation (Clutton-Brock et al., 1997).2000, Laurence D. Mueller, Amitabh Joshi, Stability in Model Populations, page 250
    Synonyms:
    Soay sheep

Synonyms of Soay

  • Soay sheep

Forms of Soay

pluralSoays

Questions about Soay

What does Soay mean?
Soay means a primitive breed of domestic sheep descended from feral sheep on the island of Soay, Scotland.
What part of speech is Soay?
Soay is a noun.
What is the plural of Soay?
The plural of Soay is Soays.

Words near Soay in the dictionary

  1. soarings
  2. soars
  3. SOAs
  4. Soave
  5. Soaves
  6. Soay
  7. Soays
  8. sob
  9. sob sister
  10. sob sisters
  11. SOB stew

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Soay (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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