Like a lamb to the slaughter
Suggest a CorrectionMeaning
Without resistance or awareness, into danger, defeat, or an unpleasant situation. Usually ominous and sometimes melodramatic. Lambs to the slaughter is a common plural form. Regional use: Biblical and medieval literary English; now widespread.
Origin
The central image comes from Isaiah 53:7, where a suffering figure is compared with a sheep led to killing and a silent lamb. The Wycliffe Bible gives that image in Middle English, and Chaucer used a close lamb-to-slaughter comparison in the Man of Law's Tale in the late fourteenth century. The modern fixed form is later, but its English ancestry is securely medieval. Modern use often implies innocence or ignorance rather than the scriptural figure's deliberate silence.
Research Sources
Variants
- Led like a lamb to the slaughter
Usage Examples
- Without reading the contract, he went into the meeting like a lamb to the slaughter.
- The inexperienced side walked onto the champion's pitch like lambs to the slaughter.
- I will not send a new employee into that hearing like a lamb to the slaughter.