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Black Sheep

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Eaton | 17:27 Sun 17th Apr 2005 | Phrases & Sayings
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Where did the saying black sheep of the family oringinate ?
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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?
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.

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