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Sheep   /ʃip/   Listen
noun
Sheep  n.  
1.
(Zool.) Any one of several species of ruminants of the genus Ovis, native of the higher mountains of both hemispheres, but most numerous in Asia. Note: The domestic sheep (Ovis aries) varies much in size, in the length and texture of its wool, the form and size of its horns, the length of its tail, etc. It was domesticated in prehistoric ages, and many distinct breeds have been produced; as the merinos, celebrated for their fine wool; the Cretan sheep, noted for their long horns; the fat-tailed, or Turkish, sheep, remarkable for the size and fatness of the tail, which often has to be supported on trucks; the Southdowns, in which the horns are lacking; and an Asiatic breed which always has four horns.
2.
A weak, bashful, silly fellow.
3.
pl. Fig.: The people of God, as being under the government and protection of Christ, the great Shepherd.
Rocky mountain sheep.(Zool.) See Bighorn.
Maned sheep. (Zool.) See Aoudad.
Sheep bot (Zool.), the larva of the sheep botfly. See Estrus.
Sheep dog (Zool.), a shepherd dog, or collie.
Sheep laurel (Bot.), a small North American shrub (Kalmia angustifolia) with deep rose-colored flowers in corymbs.
Sheep pest (Bot.), an Australian plant (Acaena ovina) related to the burnet. The fruit is covered with barbed spines, by which it adheres to the wool of sheep.
Sheep run, an extensive tract of country where sheep range and graze.
Sheep's beard (Bot.), a cichoraceous herb (Urospermum Dalechampii) of Southern Europe; so called from the conspicuous pappus of the achenes.
Sheep's bit (Bot.), a European herb (Jasione montana) having much the appearance of scabious.
Sheep pox (Med.), a contagious disease of sheep, characterixed by the development of vesicles or pocks upon the skin.
Sheep scabious. (Bot.) Same as Sheep's bit.
Sheep shears, shears in which the blades form the two ends of a steel bow, by the elasticity of which they open as often as pressed together by the hand in cutting; so called because used to cut off the wool of sheep.
Sheep sorrel. (Bot.), a prerennial herb (Rumex Acetosella) growing naturally on poor, dry, gravelly soil. Its leaves have a pleasant acid taste like sorrel.
Sheep's-wool (Zool.), the highest grade of Florida commercial sponges (Spongia equina, variety gossypina).
Sheep tick (Zool.), a wingless parasitic insect (Melophagus ovinus) belonging to the Diptera. It fixes its proboscis in the skin of the sheep and sucks the blood, leaving a swelling. Called also sheep pest, and sheep louse.
Sheep walk, a pasture for sheep; a sheep run.
Wild sheep. (Zool.) See Argali, Mouflon, and Oorial.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sheep" Quotes from Famous Books



... Baa, Baa, Black Sheep was elected to a very high position among the Kipling Stories "because it shows how mean they were to a boy and he did n't ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... instigate a villain to do wrong is like teaching a monkey to climb trees;" "To catch fish and throw away the net," which recalls our saying, "Using the cat's paw to pull the chestnuts out of the fire;" "To climb a tree to catch a fish" is to talk much to no purpose; "A superficial scholar is a sheep dressed in a tiger's skin;" "A cuckoo in a magpie's nest," equivalent to saying, "he is enjoying another's labor without compensation;" "If the blind lead the blind they will both fall into the pit;" "A fair wind raises no storm;" "Vast ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... did not try to explain; neither speaking till, to their surprise, the man turned suddenly to his right, and made for a huge buttress which ran out some fifty feet from the rugged edge of the cliff and ended in a soft patch of sheep-nibbled, velvet grass, upon which lay, partly buried, a couple of long iron guns, while the remains of a breastwork of stone guarded the ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... upon a chair beside the kitchen window, was so eccentric, that we felt a little uncertain how to regard him, and Mrs. Johnson openly described him as peculiar. He was so deeply tanned by the fervid suns of the New Hampshire winter, and his hair had so far suffered from the example of the sheep lately under his charge, that he could not be classed by any stretch of compassion with the blonde and straight-haired members ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... tree; nor in the God of Exodus who appeared to Moses and Aaron and seventy of the Elders of Israel, standing with his feet upon a paved walk as if it were a sapphire stone; nor even in the God of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah who in his compassion for the sheep who had gone astray, having turned everyone to his own way, laid on the Man of Sorrows the iniquity of us all." (Walter Lippmann: "A Preface ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks


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