ETYM as. lamb; akin to Dutch and Dan. lam, German and Swed. lamm, os., Goth., and Icel. lamb.
(Homonym: lam).
/> 1. Young sheep.
2. The flesh of a young domestic sheep eaten as food.
3. A sweet innocent mild-mannered person (especially a child); SYN. dear.
4. A person easily deceived or cheated (especially in financial matters).

To give birth to a lamb, of ewes.

(1913-) US physicist who revised the quantum theory of Paul Dirac. The hydrogen atom was thought to exist in either of two distinct states carrying equal energies. More sophisticated measurements by Lamb in 1947 demonstrated that the two energy levels were not equal. This discrepancy, since known as the Lamb shift, won him the 1955 Nobel Prize for Physics.

(1849-1934) English applied mathematician. His chief work is Treatise on the Motion of Fluids 1879, revised and updated as Hydrodynamics 1895–1932, but he also wrote on elasticity, sound, and mechanics.
Lamb was born in Stockport, Cheshire, and studied at Cambridge. He went to Australia 1875 to take up the chair of mathematics at the University of Adelaide. In 1885 he returned to England as professor at Owens College in Manchester.
Lamb was particularly adept at applying the solution of a problem in one field to problems in another. A paper of 1882, which analyzed the modes of oscillation of an elastic sphere, achieved its true recognition in 1960, when free Earth oscillations during an earthquake behaved in the way he had described. A paper of 1904 gave an analytical account of propagation over the surface of an elastic solid of waves generated by given initial disturbances, and the analysis he provided is now regarded as one of the seminal contributions to theoretical seismology.

(1775-1834) English essayist and critic. He collaborated with his sister Mary Lamb (1764–1847) on Tales from Shakespeare 1807, and his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets 1808 helped to revive interest in Elizabethan plays. As “Elia” he contributed essays to the London Magazine from 1820 (collected 1823 and 1833).
Born in London, Lamb was educated at Christ's Hospital. He was a contemporary of Coleridge, with whom he published some poetry 1796. He was a clerk at India House 1792–1825, when he retired to Enfield. His sister Mary stabbed their mother to death in a fit of insanity 1796, and Charles cared for her between her periodic returns to an asylum.