the.com/blacksheep
the one who left the herd, and never apologized for the wool.
means The odd, disreputable, or nonconforming member of a family or group — the one who stands out, usually for the wrong reasons.
from A 19th-century English idiom drawn straight from the pasture. In a flock of white sheep, a black one was the obvious exception — and its dark wool was harder to dye and so worth less, marking it as the undesirable of the bunch. There may also be an older shadow here: black was long linked with the devil and ill fortune, so the black lamb carried a faint whiff of the sinister. The phrase 'black sheep of the family' grew naturally from there, fixing one stray animal forever as the symbol of every relative who won't quite fall in line.
- real wool
- Black fleece can't be dyed, so shepherds prized white
- recessive gene
- Black sheep are rare because the color hides genetically
- old idiom
- The phrase dates to the 1700s as moral disgrace
- flock fact
- One in many lambs born dark to white parents
chris wilson the outlaw — former accountant who became a fugitive and lived in the wilderness of oregon for 13 years before capture in 2015
rejected van gogh 1888 — vincent van gogh's self-portrait with bandaged ear, painted after cutting off part of his own ear in arles, france
robert kardashian sr — attorney and businessman whose legal defense of o.j. simpson in 1995 made him the family's initial public figure before his children became famous