black sheep

1. 1.

   a reckless and unprincipled reprobate

   Synonymsscapegrace

   Broaderreprobate
2. 2.

   sheep with a black coat

   Broadersheep

Questions about black sheep

What does black sheep mean?

black sheep means "a reckless and unprincipled reprobate". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for black sheep?

Close synonyms include scapegrace. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is black sheep a common word?

black sheep is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.