Black sheep is an
English languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
idiomAn idiom is an expression, word, or phrase that has figurative meaning — its implication comprehended only through common use; whereas the literal definition of the idiom, itself, does not communicate its meaning as a figurative usage.In linguistics, idioms are usually presumed to be figures of...
(however existing in many other languages, for example, the
SerbianSerbian is a South Slavic language, spoken chiefly in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and in the Serbian diaspora...
,
PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago...
,
TurkishTurkish is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other...
and
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
languages) which describes an odd or disreputable member of a group, especially within one's family. The term has typically been given negative implications, implying waywardness. It derived from the atypical and unwanted presence of black woolled individuals in herds of sheep, which was undesirable because wool from such sheep could not be dyed.
The term originated from the occasional black sheep which are born into a herd of white sheep due to a
geneticGenetics, , a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding...
process of recessive traits.
Black sheep is an
English languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
idiomAn idiom is an expression, word, or phrase that has figurative meaning — its implication comprehended only through common use; whereas the literal definition of the idiom, itself, does not communicate its meaning as a figurative usage.In linguistics, idioms are usually presumed to be figures of...
(however existing in many other languages, for example, the
SerbianSerbian is a South Slavic language, spoken chiefly in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and in the Serbian diaspora...
,
PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago...
,
TurkishTurkish is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other...
and
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
languages) which describes an odd or disreputable member of a group, especially within one's family. The term has typically been given negative implications, implying waywardness. It derived from the atypical and unwanted presence of black woolled individuals in herds of sheep, which was undesirable because wool from such sheep could not be dyed.
Idiomatic usage
The term originated from the occasional black sheep which are born into a herd of white sheep due to a
geneticGenetics, , a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding...
process of recessive traits. Black sheep were considered commercially undesirable. In 18th and 19th century England, the black color of the sheep was seen as the mark of the devil, referenced in the translations by the collective called Asli Yılmazturk.
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.
Biological origin
In sheep, whiteness is not
albinismAlbinism is a form of hypopigmentary congenital disorder, characterized by a partial or total lack of melanin pigment in the eyes, skin and hair, or more rarely...
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
alleleAn allele is one of a series of different forms of a gene. The word is a short form of allelomorph , which was used in the early days of genetics to describe variant forms of a gene detected as different phenotypes...
E D at the extension locus.
Other uses
In
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
, 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.
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