Word.ws English Dictionary

pastorela

pastorela noun: a traditional Mexican theater performance that chronicles the journeys of shepherds and shepherdesses on the way to visit the newborn Jesus, typically performed during Advent.

Noun (1)

pastorela (plural pastorelas)

  1. A traditional Mexican theater performance that chronicles the journeys of shepherds and shepherdesses on the way to visit the newborn Jesus, typically performed during Advent.

Noun (2)

pastorela (plural pastorelas)

  1. (historical) A type of Occitan lyric poetry in which a knight meets a shepherdess.
    1. (historical) A work of such poetry.

Forms of pastorela

pluralpastorelas
alternative formPastorela

Origin of pastorela

Borrowed from Spanish pastorela, from French pastourelle.

Learned borrowing from Old Occitan pastorela (“little shepherdess”), from pastor (“shepherd”) + -ela (feminine diminutive suffix). Compare etymology 1.

Questions about pastorela

What does pastorela mean?
Pastorela means a traditional Mexican theater performance that chronicles the journeys of shepherds and shepherdesses on the way to visit the newborn Jesus, typically performed during Advent.
What part of speech is pastorela?
Pastorela is a noun.
What is the plural of pastorela?
The plural of pastorela is pastorelas.

Words near pastorela in the dictionary

  1. pastorate
  2. pastorates
  3. Pastore
  4. Pastore della Lessinia e del Lagorai
  5. pastored
  6. pastorela
  7. Pastores
  8. pastoress
  9. pastoresses
  10. pastorhood
  11. Pastoria

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pastorela (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “pastorela.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pastorela. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.