Other forms: lambs, lambing
A lamb is a young sheep, and lamb is its meat. A newborn lamb, roast lamb, lambing season.
The b is silent, which puts it with climb, comb and thumb. Lamb is one of the English food words where the animal and the meat share a name, unlike pig and pork or cow and beef, and that is because sheep farming stayed in English-speaking hands after the Norman conquest while the grand kitchens used French. Note lambing, the season when lambs are born, and like a lamb to the slaughter, meaning going into danger with no idea of it.
1nounyoungA young sheep.
“There were lambs in the field by the end of March.”
2nounlambThe meat of a young sheep.
“We are having lamb on Sunday.”
3verbeweOf a ewe, to give birth.
“The flock lambs in early spring.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
lamb is a young animal, or its meat.
Old English lamb is shared across the Germanic languages and has no certain ancestor beyond them. It is one of the oldest farm words English has, which is what you would expect of an animal that has been kept here for six thousand years.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₁l̥h₁onbʰos
Proto-Germanic
*lambaz
Proto-West Germanic
*lamb
Old English
lamb
Middle English
lamb
English, today
lamb
From Middle English lamb, from Old English lamb, from Proto-West Germanic lamb, from Proto-Germanic lambaz, probably from Proto-Indo-European h₁l̥h₁onbʰos, enlargement of h₁elh₁én, ultimately from h₁el-. See also Dutch lam, German Lamm, bar Lamperl, Danish lam, Swedish lamm, Finnish lammas, Scottish Gaelic lon (“elk”), Ancient Greek ἔλαφος (“red deer”). More at elk.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA