Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A sheep with black fleece.
- n. A member of a family or other group who is considered undesirable or disreputable.
Wiktionary
- n. Used other than as an idiom: black.
- n. a nonconformist; an unusual or unconventional person
- n. a disliked person; one who is disfavored
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. one in a family or company who is unlike the rest, and makes trouble.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a reckless and unprincipled reprobate
- n. sheep with a black coat
Examples
“The eldest brother the Marquis of Haverston, the second an earl, the third the black sheep of the family, and Anthony a close second.”
Tender Rebel
“In a nearby field black sheep grazed among black-eyed Susans.”
Roc and a Hard Place
“One day a swivel-chair pilot, an equip - ment officer, made the amazing discovery that there was a black sheep in his flock.”
The HurricaneStory
“His handsome face bloated into the plain round pock-marked face of the bailiff’s black sheep son.”
“Euphrates, from the mouth to the sources of those rivers, was reduced to his obedience: he entered Edessa; and the Turkmans of the black sheep were chastised for the sacrilegious pillage of a caravan of Mecca.”
“I never heard him utter an irrevocable judgment, even when the black sheep of the estate, a foul-mouthed farmer of whose malpractices he had had to complain to the landlord, had accused him of some dishonest trick or other.”
Maigret's Memoirs
“His father was the black sheep of a prosperous but unforgiving Irish family, his mother was the daughter of the German butcher in Winton; when she insisted on marrying Luke senior, she also was disowned.”
The Thorn Birds
“Those who saw him told me he looked pleased; but he sent me no message showing a change of viewpoint, and the gulf between the family and its black sheep remained unbridged.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘black sheep’.
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I Am A Starfish. I Speak With Paint.
List title totally stolen from she. Right, the stock entry for this list should be a two-word phrase where one of the words denotes a colour; even better if the expression has some metaphoric value...
black dog, tangerine dream, orange roughy, blue moon, blackguard, white house, purple rain, grey nurse, green thumb, yellow fever, sacre bleu, palo verde and 156 more...
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Open List: Sheepishness
Everything sheep, from Artiodactyla to zodiac.
lanolin, ram, ewe, Artiodactyla, even-toed ungulate, ruminant, Ovis aries, ovine, domestic, domesticated, neotenic, mouflon and 390 more...
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Malcolm-Hex
Words where 'black' has a negative connotation.
The awareness of this has been more publically discussed since the 60's, however with the 2008 presidental race, I am curious if any of ...black sheep, blacklist, blackmail, blackball, black hat, black mark, black day, black magic, black market, blackhole, black monday, black comedy and 65 more...
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Barbarisms
"An offense against purity of style or language; originally, the mixing of foreign words and phrases in Latin or Greek; hence, the use of words or forms not made according to the accepted usages of...
hisn, hern, gooses, goodest, pled, proven, most of what bilb..., Barbara Bush, unbarred barbs, black sheep, uncut, frizzly barbs, barbarisms and 16 more...

cosmican Someone different from other members of the family (not necessarily with a negative sense) Nov 19, 2007