pasture

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”).

noun

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.
3. (obsolete) Food, nourishment.
   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. 15 July 1831, “Of the Blood”, in Western Journal of Health, volume 4, number 1, L. B. Lincoln, page 38

verb

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.