means A person who tends, herds, and protects sheep — or, by extension, anyone who guides and looks after a group.

from From Old English sceaphierde, a tidy welding of sceap 'sheep' and hierde 'herder, keeper' (the same hierde that survives in the modern -herd of cowherd and goatherd). That hierde traces back to heord 'a herd, a flock,' so a shepherd is, quite literally, a 'sheep-herd.' The pastoral sense bled into the spiritual early on: clergy became shepherds of their flocks, and the verb 'to shepherd' — to gently steer people or things along — followed the metaphor out of the field.