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PASTOR-AL

2/3/2017

2 Comments

 
Some kid in my history class asked me yesterday what the etymology of pastoral was, in the context of "nomads". I didn't answer because this plunged me into thought: was pastoral etymologically connected to a pastor (as in minister)? Turns out that it is, and in an unexpected manner. The word pastor came from its French ancestor pastor, which meant "shepherd". This changed to a religious connotation because a pastor is a "shepherd of souls" and shepherds the masses towards salvation. Though the etymological connection is already clear, the French pastor traces back to the Latin pastor, which had the same definition. Let's look back to pastoral for a second. Though it now means "of agriculture and husbandry", or indeed, "of nomadic people", it used to mean "of shepherds", and through French and a conjugated Latin word (pastoralis) also traces back to the Latin word pastor.  This word came from pascere, which meant "to lead", since shepherds obviously lead the flock. And since a leader is supposed to protect his people (sorry, whatever half of America is not in power), this came from the Proto-Indo-European word for "protect", peh. Next time somebody mentions a Ministry of Agriculture, laugh at the irony.
2 Comments
JAMES A PADLEY
2/9/2020 11:42:49 am

You: "This word came from pascere, which meant "to lead""

"Pascere" did not mean "to lead". It meant "to feed".

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Debs
9/8/2021 05:38:56 pm

I appreciate your information and your humor!! Well said! I feel like the Bible was translated into Latin and then we left this word pastor in Latin instead of going back to the definition of shepherd. This has allowed the word to take on it's own life. Having grown up in America it wasn't until I went oversees that I learned nouns and connected them with proper nouns. "Fisher" was a last name to me and I never made the connection with fishermen. I move to Austria and learn that a "keller" is a basement and then I realize my friends last name means basement because I didn't automatically accept it as simply a proper noun. Funny how the mind works. When we think we know what something means we don't always make connections. Studying a foreign language and living among non-native English speakers showed me that I often understood the concept of a word and didn't really know how to define it. So, I get your appreciation for etymology and appreciate that you are helping us to learn what we speak.

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    Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic, a senior studying government and linguistics at Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy trivia, politics, vexillology, geography, board games, conlanging, art history, and law. 
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