sheep: [OE] Sheep is a West Germanic word, with relatives in German schaf and Dutch schaap. It is not known where it came from, although it has been speculated that it may be related to German schaffen ‘make, create’ (and hence to English shape), and that its underlying meaning is hence ‘creature’. The derivative sheepish [12] originally meant simply ‘sheeplike’. It had a variety of metaphorical applications in Middle English, including ‘silly’ and ‘fearful’, but the modern ‘shy’ did not emerge until the late 17th century. Shepherd is of course based on sheep.
