Black Sheep

[Eaton]

Where did the saying black sheep of the family oringinate ?

[Grunty]

I've always thought that it was just that black sheep are a minority and the person is a bit unusual.  It has to be admitted though that previous generations freely used the word black to denote something that was not very nice.  As a child, I was once in a park with a younger child of African origin, when two elderly ladies came by.  One said "Look, it's black".  The other said "Yes, they've got them working in food shops now; it's disgusting".  I found it as unpleasant then as I do now, but such attitudes were by no means unusual in those days.  How much worse must they have been when the phrase originated?

[Quizmonster]

The original, proverbial, form was "There's a black sheep in every flock." Because of the alliterative effect, it was easy to convert this to "...every family." It has been used to refer to a 'bad one' in human terms since the 1700s.