a musical composition that evokes rural life
Used in a Sentence
pastoral
How to use pastoral in a sentence. Example sentences and definitions for pastoral.
Editorial note
In a nomadic pastoral culture, wealth might be owning a big herd.
Examples12
Definitions6
Parts of speech2
Quick take
a musical composition that evokes rural life
Meaning at a glance
The clearest senses and uses of pastoral gathered in one view.
a letter from a pastor to the congregation
a literary work idealizing the rural life (especially the life of shepherds)
Definitions
Core meanings and parts of speech for pastoral.
noun
a musical composition that evokes rural life
noun
a letter from a pastor to the congregation
noun
a literary work idealizing the rural life (especially the life of shepherds)
adjective
of or relating to a pastor; "pastoral work"; "a pastoral letter"
adjective
relating to shepherds or herdsmen or devoted to raising sheep or cattle; "pastoral seminomadic people"; "pastoral land"; "a pastoral economy"
See also: bucolic
adjective
(used with regard to idealized country life) idyllically rustic; "a country life of arcadian contentment"; "a pleasant bucolic scene"; "charming in its pastoral setting"; "rustic tranquility"
Example sentences
In a nomadic pastoral culture, wealth might be owning a big herd.
There are several cities here but many, many more pastoral small towns, much like New England.
Somehow, we can turn Venus into a pastoral world but we can't scrub a few trillion tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere?
The phrase "mud huts" evokes a primitive pastoral lifestyle, but there are a lot of places where mud brick is simply a sensible building material.
This would presumably make quite a difference for semi-starving pastoral populations in 10,000 BC.
We are not pastoral nomads, we are not jungle hunter-gatherers, we are not inhabitants of tiny city-states.
The setting is an abstract, somewhat pastoral landscape full of things whose descriptions are alien but extremely evocative.
It's not hippy pastoral-era farming vs post-modern industrial farm.
A foreign more technologically advanced people came in with weapons and technologies that were basically magic to these hunter gather/pastoral people.
It might be one reason why pastoral farmers[1] thought that women were "unclean", and I'd be interested to know whether goddess-worship comes from more agrarian than pastoral societies.
The Cain and Abel story clearly establishes that the authors are pastoral farmers who distrust those sneaky evil agriculturalists; and they also have an extensive code of cleanliness which includes a woman as unclean during menstruation.
Even the ideal pastoral rural hobby egg-farmer has intrinsically cruel aspects because of the useless male chicks and occasional violence between chickens... but it feels like these would be lower hurdles to overcome with technology than weaving synthetic beef on a magical meat-loom.
Frequently asked questions
Short answers drawn from the clearest meanings and examples for this word.
How do you use pastoral in a sentence?
In a nomadic pastoral culture, wealth might be owning a big herd.
What does pastoral mean?
a musical composition that evokes rural life
What part of speech is pastoral?
pastoral is commonly used as noun, adjective.