Example sentences
wǒ我xiǎng想chī吃yáng羊ròu肉。
I want to eat mutton.
yáng羊ròu肉hěn很hǎo好chī吃。
Mutton is delicious.
About this word
羊 is a sheep, 肉 is meat, so 羊肉 is sheep meat, the meat the animal is named after. Chinese builds every common meat this way: 牛肉 beef, 猪肉 pork, 鸡肉 chicken, 鱼肉 fish. English reaches for French loanwords on the plate (beef, pork, mutton) because the Norman cooks named the dishes while the Anglo-Saxon farmers named the animals. Chinese never made that split.
The story behind the character
羊
羊 is a sheep's head, seen from the front. Two horns curl at the top, ears flare out, and the long face runs down the middle. Xu Shen opened his entry with 羊，祥也: sheep is auspicious. Keep a sheep under your roof and things were going well for you. The animal and the good luck were the same word.
肉
肉 is a cut of meat with the ribs and grain of the muscle drawn in. Xu Shen defined it as 胾肉, a piece carved off. This is why meat hangs inside so many body characters: 脸, 腿, 胖, 胳. Inside those it gets flattened into 月 and stops meaning moon. Every body part you can grab is built on a slab of meat.