shepherding

shepherding is the present participle and gerund of shepherd.

Noun

shepherding (countable and uncountable, plural shepherdings)

The herding of sheep.
The act of one who shepherds or guides.
- I'd long believed that he was noticing more and more of my subtleties, and was growing ever more conscious of my secret shepherdings. Now he believes me safely out of the way, with all my power stripped.2015, Libbie Hawker, House of Rejoicing

shepherd (third-person singular simple present shepherds, present participle shepherding, simple past and past participle shepherded)

(transitive) To watch over; to guide.
- For me has Pain, the sentinel, / Been vigilant / To pace my plot and dwell / Within my tent; / Oft in the night with small alarms / Has stirred me out of rest, / Alert, oppressed, / Till shepherded within thine arms / And on thy breast, / O loving Lady, in the curse of Pain / I have been blest— /...1893, Norman Gale, “In Pain”, in Orchard Songs, London: [Charles] Elkin Mathews & John Lane; New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC, pages 34–35
(transitive, Australian rules football) To obstruct an opponent from getting to the ball, either when a teammate has it or is going for it, or if the ball is about to bounce through the goal or out of bounds.

plural	shepherdings

What does shepherding mean?: Shepherding means the herding of sheep.
What is shepherding the present participle and gerund of?: Shepherding is the present participle and gerund of shepherd.
What part of speech is shepherding?: Shepherding is a noun.
What is the plural of shepherding?: The plural of shepherding is shepherdings.

Adapted from Wiktionary: shepherding (page history and authors); shepherd (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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