pasture
English
Etymology
From Middle English pasture, pastoure, borrowed from Anglo-Norman pastour, Old French pasture, from Latin pastūra, from the stem of pascere (“to feed, graze”).
Pronunciation
Noun
pasture (countable and uncountable, plural pastures)
- Land, specifically, an open field, on which livestock is kept for feeding.
- Ground covered with grass or herbage, used or suitable for the grazing of livestock.
- Synonym: (dialectal) leasow
- 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981, Psalms 23:2:
- He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
- 1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act V, scene iv]:
- So graze as you find pasture.
- (obsolete) Food, nourishment.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938:
- Ne euer is he wont on ought to feed, / But toades and frogs, his pasture poysonous […] .
- 1831 July 15, “Of the Blood”, in Western Journal of Health, volume 4, number 1, L. B. Lincoln, page 38:
- It was reserved for Christians to torture bread, the staff of life, bread for which children in whole districts wail, bread, the gift of pasture to the poor, bread, for want of which thousands of our fellow beings annually perish by famine; it was reserved for Christians to torture the material of bread by fire, to create a chemical and maddening poison, burning up the brain and brutalizing the soul, and producing evils to humanity, in comparison of which, war, pestilence, and famine, cease to be evils.
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Derived terms
- pastureland
- pasture rose
- pasture thistle
- put out to pasture
Translations
land on which cattle can be kept for feeding
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Verb
pasture (third-person singular simple present pastures, present participle pasturing, simple past and past participle pastured)
Translations
to herd animals into a pasture
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graze — see graze
Friulian
Latin
Pronunciation
- (Classical) IPA(key): /paːsˈtuː.re/, [päːs̠ˈt̪uːrɛ]
- (Ecclesiastical) IPA(key): /pasˈtu.re/, [päsˈt̪uːre]
Middle French
Etymology
From Old French pasture.
Descendants
- French: pâture
References
- pasture on Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330–1500) (in French)
- Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle (1881) (pasture, supplement)
Old French
Noun
pasture f (oblique plural pastures, nominative singular pasture, nominative plural pastures)
- pasture (grassy field upon which cattle graze)
- 1377, Bernard de Gordon, Fleur de lis de medecine (a.k.a. lilium medicine), page 165 of this essay:
- les bestes doivent estre nourries en bonnes pastures
- the animals must be fed on good pastures
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- pasture (nourishment for an animal)
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