depasture

present singular third person depastures · participle present depasturing · participle past depastured · past depastured

1. archaicTo eat up, consume; to strip.

   Earth like the patient was whose lively blood / Hath overcome at last some sickness strong, / Whose feeble limbs had been the bait and food / Whereon his strange disease depastur'd long.

   1600, Edward Fairfax, The Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso, XIII, lxxix

2. archaicTo feed or pasture; to graze.

   The butter, rich and yellow as the gowaned bank on which the milky mother has depastured, is probably taken directly from the churn.

   The New Sporting Magazine (volume 18, page 184)

   1 more example

   The defendant's tort-feasance is now set forth with the damage, and the plaintiff says, that the defendant with an intention to injure him in the enjoyment of his commonable estate, during the time of his being so entitled to his common, wrongfully put and depastured several cattle on the waste there, in consequence of which, he has been unable to make use of his commonable profits in as ample and beneficial a manner as he otherwise might.

   1824, Humphry W[illiam] Woolrych, “Of Pleading Rights of Common, etc.”, in A Treatise on the Law of Rights of Common, London: Joseph Butterworth and Son, law booksellers, 43, Fleet Street, →OCLC, page 278