Meat from a sheep, usually an older sheep, commonly eaten in Middle Eastern, Indian, and Mediterranean cuisine.
From Old French 'moton' meaning sheep, which came from Medieval Latin 'multo' or 'monton'. The word entered English through the Norman conquest in 1066 and replaced the Anglo-Saxon word 'sheep' for the meat.
Mutton is a perfect example of how the Norman conquest changed English vocabulary—the French said 'mouton' for the meat while peasants said 'sheep,' and that split between fancy meat vocabulary and farm animal names still exists in English (beef/cow, pork/pig, venison/deer).
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