paŝtisto

Decode it: paŝt- plus -ist- plus -o.Paŝti is to put animals out to graze and to tend them while they do. -Ist- is the suffix of trade and profession, the one in instruisto, kuracisto and verkisto. A paŝtisto is therefore somebody whose work is pasturing, which is a shepherd. Paŝtistino is a shepherdess and paŝtistaro the herders of a district taken together.

Why -ist- and not -ant- here. Both would build a word. A paŝtanto would be whoever happens to be minding the sheep this afternoon; a paŝtisto does it for a living, and shepherding is exactly the kind of thing people do for a living. Compare konsilanto ten ranks back, where the language went the other way for the opposite reason. That contrast is the whole -ant- against -ist- lesson in two words from one band, and La Parolanto sets out the general rule.

Biblical register, and you will meet it there first. La Bona Paŝtisto is the Good Shepherd, and the twenty-third psalm opens La Eternulo estas mia paŝtisto in Zamenhof's own translation of the Old Testament - which is, as it happens, one of the founding texts of Esperanto prose style. The metaphor carries into church language exactly as it does in English: a paŝtisto can be a minister of a congregation, and paŝtista letero is a pastoral letter. If you have read any Esperanto Bible at all you have met this word.

And the practical sense stays alive too. Sheep on a hillside, cattle by a river, a paŝtejo to put them in and a bastono to carry. Nothing figurative about it.