black sheep

1. A sheep with black fleece.
2. A member of a family or other group who is considered undesirable or disreputable.

The least reputable member of a group; a disgrace. For example, Uncle Fritz was the black sheep of the family; we always thought he emigrated to Argentina to avoid jail. This metaphor is based on the idea that black sheep were less valuable than white ones because it was more difficult to dye their wool different colors. Also, in the 16th century, their color was considered the devil's mark. By the 18th century the term was widely used as it is today, for the odd member of a group.

The nickname for Marine Attack Squadron 214, first commissioned in early 1942 at Ewa, Hawaii. Its mission is to provide close-air support, and conduct armed reconnaissance and limited air defense for Marine expeditionary forces. It was active in the Pacific theater in World War II and has seen action in every major conflict since.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

‘We speak figuratively of the one black sheep that is the cause of sorrow in a family; but in its reality it is regarded by the Sussex shepherd as an omen of good luck to his flock’ (Folk-Lore Record 1 (1878), 8). A number of other nineteenth and twentieth century references, from Somerset, Kent, and Derbyshire, for example, agree with this assessment of the black sheep, but others say the opposite. ‘It was unlucky for the first lamb dropped in lambing season to be black—black twins were more unlucky’ (Wiltshire, 1975: 56) and Charles Igglesden (c.1932: 105) writes the same for Shropshire, adding that the only way to avoid the bad luck is to cut their throats before they can ‘baa’.

Bibliography
The full bibliography list is available here.

• Opie and Tatem, 1989: 29

For other uses, see Black sheep (disambiguation).

A black sheep stands out from the herd

The Black Sheep, from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose by William Wallace Denslow.

In the English language, Black sheep is an idiom used to describe an odd or disreputable member of a group, especially within one's family. The term has typically been given negative implications, implying waywardness.^[1] It derived from the atypical and unwanted presence of black individuals in herds of white sheep. The idiom is also found in other languages, e.g., Serbian, Bulgarian, Portuguese, Turkish and Polish.

Contents 1 Idiomatic usage 1.1 Biological origin 2 Other uses 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

Idiomatic usage

The term originated from the occasional black sheep which are born into a herd of white sheep due to a genetic process of recessive traits. Black wool was considered commercially undesirable because it could not be dyed.^[1] In 18th and 19th century England, the black color of the sheep was seen as the mark of the devil.^[2] In modern usage, the expression has lost some of its negative connotations, and the term is usually given to the member of a group who has certain characteristics or lack thereof deemed undesirable by that group.^[3]

Biological origin

In sheep, whiteness is not albinism but a dominant gene that actively switches color production off. As a result, sheep blackness is recessive, and if a white ram and a white ewe are parents of a black lamb, both must be heterozygous for black, and then there is a 25% chance that the lamb will be black. A recent study done by the Agricultural University of Norway, and the Vollum Institute of the Oregon Health Sciences University believe the black color is created by an allele E D at the extension locus.^[4]

Other uses

In psychology, the "black sheep effect" refers to the tendency of an in-group to treat or evaluate a member of its own more harshly than a similarly negative behavior or deed of an out-group member.^[5]

See also

Look up black sheep in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• The Ugly Duckling
• Scapegoat
• Red headed stepchild

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms". http://books.google.com/books?id=9re1vfFh04sC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=american+heritage+dictionary+%22black+sheep%22&source=web&ots=JF-Bux9gXr&sig=rAsie-Mb4W-9vB3TZzSbIuVHKLE. Retrieved 2007-11-13. 
2. ^ Sykes, Christopher Simon (1983). Black Sheep. New York: Viking Press. p. 11. ISBN 0670172766. 
3. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1992. http://www.answers.com/topic/black-sheep. Retrieved 2008-03-24. 
4. ^ VåGe, Dag Inge; Dag Inge Våge, Helge Klungland, Dongsi Lu and Roger D. Cone (January, 1999). "Molecular and pharmacological characterization of dominant black coat color in sheep". Mammalian Genome (Springer New York) 10 (1): 39–43. doi:10.1007/s003359900939. ISSN [http://worldcat.org/issn/0938-8990 (Print) 1432-1777 (Online) 0938-8990 (Print) 1432-1777 (Online)]. http://www.springerlink.com/content/h800bru487qmhtck/. Retrieved 2008-03-31. 
5. ^ Black sheep effect Psychology Lexicon. Retrieved on January 4, 2008

External links

• [1] Exploration of the etymology of the phrase "black sheep of the family."
• "The black sheep effect: Judgmental extremity towards ingroup members in inter-and intra-group situations". European Journal of Social Psychology (Science Direct) 18 (3): 287–292. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420180308. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00221031. Retrieved 2008-01-04. 

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