pâtre

Forms

pâtre m (plural pâtres)^[1] Old French pastre and paistre; the spelling pâtre dates from the 16th century.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French pastre, inherited from Latin pastor (“shepherd”), from the Latin nominative.^[4][5][1] In Old French it was the subject case of pasteur, whose oblique case came from the Latin accusative;^[4][6][3] Littré explains the two forms by the place of the Latin stress, on the first syllable in the nominative and on the second in the accusative.^[4][6][3] Wiktionary treats that word as a doublet borrowed from the Latin accusative.^[1] The Latin noun comes from the supine of pāscō (“to graze, to feed”).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears in a biblical context, in the Cambridge Psalter (first half of the 12th century): Li Sire mes pastres, “The Lord is my shepherd”, rendering Dominus pastor meus.^[4][5] The GLLF cites paistre a little earlier, about 1112, in the Voyage de saint Brendan.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Once the two case forms had become separate words, each kept its own sense: pasteur was early reserved for the religious sense, while pâtre named the man who grazes and guards the flocks, as in Marie de France's Fables about 1180.^[5][4] Bloch and Wartburg note that pasteur was still used of a herdsman until the 17th century and survives as patou(r) in the west, and that the religious sense may have been left to it because pâtre existed.^[6] Berger has since driven pâtre out of everyday speech, and it is now a literary synonym.^[5][6]

Timeline

• c. 1112 – Paistre in the Voyage de saint Brendan.^[2]
• first half of the 12th century – Pastres in the Cambridge Psalter.^[4]
• c. 1180 – Marie de France uses pastre for a herdsman in her Fables.^[4]
• 16th century – The spelling pâtre appears.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (literary) A herdsman or shepherd, one who grazes and guards flocks or herds.^[4][7][1]

Related words

• pasteur
• paître
• berger
• pastoureau
• Latin pastor

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
3. ^ a b c Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
5. ^ a b c d Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ a b c d Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
7. ^ Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert