A sheep is a woolly farm animal that says baa. A flock of sheep, sheep farming, count sheep.
They have rectangular pupils, which gives them a very wide field of view and is why they see a great deal without turning their heads. They recognise faces, their own and human, for years. Sheep is the same in the singular and plural. Note the separate words mutton and lamb for the meat, which came from French.
1nounsheepA woolly farm animal kept for wool and meat.
“The farmer's dog rounded up the sheep and brought them down the hill.”
sheep is an animal.
Also accepted in games: lamb
Old English sceap is a Germanic word of unknown origin. The meat words mutton and lamb came separately, mutton from French.
Middle English
schep
English, today
sheep
Built from
From Middle English schep. Middle English schep, schepe, from ang-ang sċēp (West Saxon sċēap), from Proto-West Germanic skāp, from Proto-Germanic skēpą, of unknown origin. Perhaps from the same xsc - word (compare os цӕу (“goat”), Persian چپش (“yearling goat”)) which was borrowed into Albanian - as cjap, sqap (“buck”) and into Slavic (compare Polish cap). After Kroonen, skēpą is instead from the root of Proto-Germanic skabaną* (“to scratch”) via Kluge's law.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA