Lamb just means young sheep. The dinner version for sheep is mutton.

This language quirk for calling the meat version of an animal different comes from French influence, when the English aristocracy spoke French in court. Beef, pork and mutton comes from the Old French words buef, porc and moton. Which just means ox, swine and sheep.

You say that but so you have any idea how long it took my daughter to realize Chicken, the animal, is the same as Chicken, the food?

in french it's just the name of the animal. Here's a cow. eat cow. A pig ? eat pig.

Maybe it makes it easier to mentally link together the live animal and its meat.

Interesting that the second character looks like a skeleton torso, since characters are kind of pictograms too. I assume that one means "meat"? ( sorry, duh, you just said so)

Funny how English has

Those are not actually English words. "Pork" is from French at least. It's a euphemism for the english "swine". Meat is a luxury for the extremely privileged.

Youtube short on topic: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/63DYCz9P1XM