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mutton

UK/ˈmʌt(ə)n/US/ˈmʌt(ə)n/
nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,185 of 15,258neutral

Mutton is the meat of a fully grown sheep. A leg of mutton, mutton stew, tough mutton.

Lamb comes from a young animal and mutton from an older one, and mutton is stronger in flavour and needs long slow cooking. It fell out of British fashion after the war and is common in Indian and Caribbean cooking. Mutton dressed as lamb is an unkind phrase.

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Definitions of mutton

  1. 1nounmuttonThe meat of a fully grown sheep.B2+

    “The old shepherd lived on bread, cheese and the occasional leg of mutton.”

mutton is a meat.

Where it comes from

Old French mouton meant a sheep, from a Celtic word. The Norman ruling class named the meat while the English kept sheep.

  1. Proto-Celtic

    *moltos — ram, wether

  2. cel-gau

    *multon-

  3. Vulgar Latin

    moltō

  4. Old French

    mouton — sheep

  5. Middle English

    motoun

  6. English, today

    mutton

From Middle English motoun, moton, from Old French mouton (“sheep”), from Vulgar Latin moltō, from cel-gau multon-, from Proto-Celtic moltos (“ram, wether”). a doublet of mouton.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

mutton in the wild

  • Lamb and mutton, collectively sheep meat (or sheepmeat), is meat from the domestic sheep, Ovis aries.

    Lamb and mutton

  • The name "mutton" comes from French language mouton, sheep.

    Lamb and mutton

  • Sosatie is a traditional South African dish of meat (usually lamb or mutton) cooked on skewers.

    Sosatie

  • Lamb and mutton are terms for the meat of domestic sheep (species Ovis aries) at different ages.

    List of lamb dishes

  • The meat of an adult sheep is mutton, a term only used for the meat, not the living animal.

    List of lamb dishes

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.