ewe

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English ewe, also eue and ouwe,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English ēowu, also ēwe,^[2][5][6][7] according to Etymonline and Klein the feminine of ēow (“sheep”).^[8][4] It goes back through Proto-West Germanic *awi to Proto-Germanic *awiz and Proto-Indo-European *h₂ówis (“sheep”).^[1][9] Etymonline and the American Heritage Dictionary write the root *owi-,^[8][5] while Kroonen reconstructs *h₃éu-i-s, which he thinks Germanic kept with the genitive *aujaz, to explain the variation between Middle Dutch ouwe and ooie.^[10] The OED takes the final -u as an ending taken over from other short stems, and notes a dispute over whether the Old English diphthong was long.^[6] The word is cognate with Old Frisian ei, Old Saxon ewi, Dutch ooi, Old High German ouwi and Old Norse ær,^[6][3][8] and with Gothic 𐌰𐍅𐌹𐍃𐍄𐍂 (awistr, “sheepfold”) and 𐌰𐍅𐌴𐌸𐌹 (awēþi, “flock of sheep”).^[3][11][4] Outside Germanic it is related to Latin ovis, Ancient Greek ὄϊς (óïs), Old Irish ói, Lithuanian avìs and Hittite ḫau̯i-, all meaning "sheep",^[9][8][3] to the Sanskrit word for sheep,^[9][11] and to Welsh ewig (“hind”).^[8][4] Klein compares ovine.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A female sheep.^[6][7] Barnhart dates Old English ēowu to about 1000, in Ælfric's translation of Genesis;^[3] the OED's first quotation is from the Laws of Ine,^[6] which Skeat and Bosworth–Toller also cite.^[12][7] Merriam-Webster Unabridged says before the 12th century.^[13]

Semantic evolution

The core meaning has stayed the same since Old English.^[6][7] Bosworth–Toller notes that the Anglo-Saxons milked ewes, using the milk for butter and cheese, as Ælfric's shepherd describes.^[7] Later dictionaries extend the word to the females of related animals, such as goats and the smaller antelopes.^[13][14] Johnson (1755) defined it as "the she-sheep; the female to the ram".^[15] The compound ewe lamb took a figurative sense, one's most cherished possession, from the story in 2 Samuel 12.^[14][16] A verb meaning "to give birth to a lamb" lasted from 1579 to 1648,^[6] and another, recorded from 1848, means "to give a ewe-neck look to".^[6] A ewe-neck is a horse's neck that curves inward along its upper outline.^[14] English dialects in Scotland, Ireland and England had such forms as yow, yowe, yeo and yoe,^[17] and Lincolnshire had yaw-necked.^[17] In New Zealand slang a ewe is a female.^[18]

Timeline

• c. 1000 – Old English ēowu, a female sheep.^[3]
• c. 1200 – the compound ewe-lomb, a female lamb, probably from about this date.^[3]
• before 1300 – the form awe, in “Sumer is icumen in”.^[2] Barnhart dates ouwe to about 1300.^[3]
• 1579 – verb, to give birth to a lamb (obsolete after 1648).^[6]
• 1612 – transferred use, in B. Jonson's The Alchemist.^[6]
• 1848 – verb, to give a ewe-neck look to.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A female sheep, especially a fully grown one: The ewe nursed her two lambs in the barn.^[19][13][14]
2. The female of certain related animals, such as goats or the smaller antelopes.^[13][14]
3. ewe lamb: a female lamb; figuratively, one's most cherished possession.^[14][16][19]
4. (New Zealand, slang) A female.^[18]

Word family

• ewe lamb

Related words

• ovine
• yowe
• yew

Usage notes

Merriam-Webster Unabridged records the pronunciation /ˈyō/ as especially common among farm dwellers.^[13] Dictionary.com lists the word as a homophone of yew and you.^[20] The capitalised Ewe, a West African people of Ghana, Togo and Benin and their language, is a separate word, recorded from 1858, from the people's own name Ewe Eʋe.^[6][19][13] In East Anglia and the fens, white ewe or ewe was also a shelly kind of earth, recorded in 1863 and of unknown origin.^[6][17]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
8. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
10. ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
14. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
17. ^ a b c Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
18. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
19. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
20. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House