pasture

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Middle English pasture, pastoure, borrowed from Anglo-Norman pastour, Old French pasture, from Latin pāstūra, from the stem of pāscō (to feed, graze).

Pronunciation[edit]

  • (UK) IPA(key): /ˈpɑːs.tjə/, /ˈpɑːs.t͡ʃə/
  • (US) IPA(key): /ˈpæs.t͡ʃɚ/, (dialectal) /ˈpæs.tɚ/
  • (file)
  • Rhymes: (UK) -ɑːstjə, (US, dialectal) -æstə(ɹ)

Noun[edit]

pasture (countable and uncountable, plural pastures)

  1. Land, specifically, an open field, on which livestock is kept for feeding.
  2. Ground covered with grass or herbage, used or suitable for the grazing of livestock.
    Synonym: (dialectal) leasow
  3. (obsolete) Food, nourishment.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. [], London: [] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
      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[1], 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.

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

Verb[edit]

pasture (third-person singular simple present pastures, present participle pasturing, simple past and past participle pastured)

  1. (transitive) To move animals into a pasture.
  2. (intransitive) To graze.
  3. (transitive) To feed, especially on growing grass; to supply grass as food for.
    The farmer pastures fifty oxen.
    The land will pasture forty cows.

Translations[edit]

Anagrams[edit]

Friulian[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Latin pastūra, from pāstus.

Noun[edit]

pasture f (plural pasturis)

  1. pasture
    Synonyms: passon, pasc

Related terms[edit]

Italian[edit]

Noun[edit]

pasture f

  1. plural of pastura

Anagrams[edit]

Latin[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

Participle[edit]

pāstūre

  1. vocative masculine singular of pāstūrus

Middle French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Old French pasture.

Noun[edit]

pasture f (plural pastures)

  1. pasture (grassy field upon which cattle graze)

Descendants[edit]

  • French: pâture

References[edit]

  • 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[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Latin pastūra, from pāstus.

Noun[edit]

pasture oblique singularf (oblique plural pastures, nominative singular pasture, nominative plural pastures)

  1. 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
  2. pasture (nourishment for an animal)

Descendants[edit]