black sheep

A deviant or eccentric; the least successful, least admirable member of a group. Black sheep were long considered less valuable than white ones because their wool could not readily be dyed. Several sixteenth- century writers wrote of the black sheep as a dangerous (“perilous”) ani- mal, among them John Lyly. In the eighteenth century, the application to the human deviant became common. Sir Walter Scott wrote, “The curates know best the black sheep of the flock” (1816), and “the black sheep of the family” was an increasingly common way of singling out the odd member.