pastoral

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   used with regard to idealized country life, idyllically rustic

   Pastoral poems bore me to death.

2. 2
   adj

   of or relating to a pastor

   pastoral work

3. 3
   adj

   relating to shepherds or herdsmen or devoted to raising sheep or cattle

   pastoral seminomadic people

4. 4
   adj

   Of or pertaining to shepherds or herders of other livestock.

   Like the Mesolithic age of 10,000-8000 B.C., the period 6000-4000 B.C. seems to be one of the fall of fortresses and the rise of pastoral nomadism.

5. 5
   adj

   Relating to rural life and scenes, in particular of poetry.

   We were living a pastoral life.

6. 6
   adj

   Relating to the care of souls, to the pastor of a church or to any local religious leader charged with the service of individual parishioners, i.e. a priest or rabbi.

   pastoral duties

7. 7
   noun

   A poem describing the life and manners of shepherds; a poem in which the speakers assume the character of shepherds; an idyll; a bucolic.

   Ethel was silent from surprise: she had prepared herself for anger—even sorrow; but ridicule left her without an answer. What could she say to a hearer, who only smiled, and to whom emotion was only a scene in a pastoral?

8. 8
   noun

   a literary work idealizing the rural life (especially the life of shepherds)

Etymology

From Middle French, Old French pastoral, from Latin pāstōrālis, from pāstor (“shepherd”), + adjective suffix -ālis.