“Black Sheep”: Origin and Meaning of the Expression

A person who stands out in some negative way from a group of which he or she is a member is a black sheep. The origin of the expression lies in old English farms and folklore.

On those farms hundreds of years ago, an occasional black-fleeced sheep would be born (through a genetic process of recessive traits) into a flock of normally white-fleeced sheep. Farmers found the black sheep to be commercially undesirable because dying black wool was much less effective than dying white wool. Therefore, the black wool-and the black sheep-had little value.

Besides being a financial burden, black sheep also suffered in their reputation because of folklore beliefs about the color black. Throughout the 16th century, popular expressions arose using black to mean wicked or having dark, deadly purposes.

One of those expressions was Prince of Darkness (1526, Oxford English Dictionary), a name for the Devil. Another was blackguard (1563, Oxford), a guard, or following, of villains, that is, people with dark characters.

Black art (c. 1590, Oxford) was magic, referring to the dark nature of the art on the popular belief that magicians were associated with the Devil. Black flag (1593, Oxford) was a flag of black cloth, used with some reference to death or deadly purpose.

Not surprisingly, this dark period also yielded the first important example of black sheep as a figurative expression. A line from a 16th-century ballad clearly states a nonexperientially derived belief that a black sheep differs from other sheep not only in color but also in character: “The blacke shepe is a perylous beast” (c. 1550, Oxford).

The term black sheep became virtually synonymous with bad character. A famous literary example was written by the Irish playwright Charles Macklin in act 5, scene 1, of his comedy The True-Born Scotchman, first produced in Dublin in 1764: “O ye villain! you-you-you are a black sheep; and I’ll mark you.” The play later became known as The Man of the World, produced in London in 1781 and published in 1792.

Black sheep eventually took on a proverbial status. The proverb was often stated in some version of There is a black sheep in every flock.

Here are a couple of examples of that proverbial use: “The curates…know best the black sheep of the flock” (1816, Oxford) and “Kate, the black sheep of the family” (1856, Oxford).

Today any member of a group that stands in contrast to the other members, especially by reason of undesirable characteristics as defined by the user of the expression, is a black sheep.
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The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1989.