white sheep
- noun
- Informal
:
oveja blanca
- In a corrupt office, she was the white sheep who always did the right thing.
Examples
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While his friends constantly broke rules, John stood out as the white sheep.
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In a room full of troublemakers, John was the white sheep.
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Among his rebellious siblings, Mark was considered the white sheep of the family.
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She always stood out as the white sheep among her peers.
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Among his rebellious siblings, Mark was considered the white sheep of the family due to his honesty and kindness.
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In a corrupt office, she was the white sheep who always did the right thing, standing out for her integrity.
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While his friends constantly broke rules, John stood out as the white sheep because he always followed the law.
Synonyms
1
5.3
A person who uses computer skills to find and fix security problems
Antonyms
How Virtuous
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'white' (pure/innocent) with 'sheep' (a follower/person who follows the crowd): it signals a follower who is positively distinctive. This compositional pattern (white = purity/positive, animal label = social type) is common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
White sheep The idiom white sheep comes from the image of a clean white sheep standing apart from darker animals. One popular idea is that this clean animal looks 'good' or honest, so the phrase means 'a person who behaves well and stands out from the others'.