shepherd

«shepherd» in Mova's school dictionary: a person whose job is to look after sheep, keeping them… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a shepherd, shepherds); verb (shepherd, shepherds, shepherded, shepherding)

meaning for a pupil

1) A shepherd is a person whose job is to look after sheep, keeping them safe and moving them to fresh grass. tree →

2) To shepherd people is to guide them carefully somewhere, like a teacher shepherding children onto a bus. tree →

3) A German shepherd is a large kind of dog. tree →

sense in the lessons

In farm and countryside lessons, a shepherd works with sheepdogs, counts the flock and protects lambs from foxes. In stories and fables, such as «The Boy Who Cried Wolf», a shepherd boy lies and then is not believed. In everyday life, adults shepherd children across roads.

examples

• The shepherd led the sheep up the hill. tree →
• A sheepdog helps the shepherd round up the flock. tree →
• In the story, the shepherd boy cried «Wolf!» too many times. tree →
• The teacher shepherded the class onto the bus. tree →
• The shepherd counted 40 sheep in the field. tree →
• Our neighbour has a German shepherd called Max. tree →
• The shepherd stayed up all night when the lambs were born. tree →

note

Countable noun; regular verb (shepherded). Pronounced SHEP-erd: the «h» is silent. A woman who does this job is also a shepherd (old word: shepherdess). A German shepherd is a dog, not a person. The group of sheep is a «flock».

In the corpora

• Picture a hillside: a shepherd whistles, the dog swings left round the flock, and three hundred sheep move as one.
• Sheepdog trials are real competitions where dog and shepherd move sheep through gates and into a pen.
• God sent the prophet Samuel to anoint the youngest son of Jesse, the shepherd boy David, as the future king.
• Many psalms are linked with King David, who was a shepherd boy before he became king.
• Psalm 23 begins «The Lord is my shepherd» and pictures God leading, feeding and protecting, even through the darkest valley.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «shepherd» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.