swineherd

UK/ˈswaɪnˌhɜːd/

nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Other forms: swineherds

A swineherd is somebody whose job is looking after pigs. The village swineherd.

Pigs were driven into woodland to eat acorns, which was a right worth money to a village. A swineherd was among the lowest paid workers and needed real knowledge of the woods.

Definitions of swineherd

1nounswineherdSomebody whose job is looking after pigs.C1
“The swineherd took every pig in the parish into the wood in autumn.”

swineherd is a worker.

Where it comes from

Old English swinhierde is swine plus herd, in the old sense of a herdsman.

Old English
swīnhierde
Middle English
swynherde
English, today
swineherd

From Middle English swynherde, from Old English swīnhierde. Cognate with German Schweinehirt.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

swineherd in the wild

In Greek mythology, Eumaeus was Odysseus's slave, swineherd, and friend.
Eumaeus
The swineherd finds Culhwch in the pigs' run, and takes him back to his father Cilydd.
Culhwch
Eof (also Eoves) was a swineherd who claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary at Evesham in England, about 701.
Eof
When she is near to giving birth, her senses return, and she takes shelter with a swineherd.
Goleuddydd
The swineherd takes the baby away to be baptised as Culhwch; he becomes the protagonist of Culhwch and Olwen.
Goleuddydd

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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